attraction in the sunny Touraine meadows, and occupied themselves a good
deal with Tours itself. On the outskirts of the town is the village of
Plessis-les-Tours, where stood the famous fortress of Louis XI., who
lived, plotted and died within its walls; here also Louis XII. was
proclaimed “father of his people,” and here Henri III. and the King of
Navarre met together for a common defence against the League. To an
Englishman the name naturally associates itself with Quentin Durward,
and calls up a picture of the grim fortress so vividly described by
Walter Scott, with its triple moat and high palisades, its dark walls
and turreted gateways, defended by three hundred Scottish arches, and
the donjon tower “which rose like a black Ethiopian giant, high into
the air.” The castle of Plessis was in old days a terror to the
countryside; the surrounding forest was a perfect network of man-traps,
and the intruder, were he fortunate enough to avoid these, had no chance
of escape from the arrows of the Scottish guard in their iron “swallows’
nests” upon the walls. Hardly less mysterious, indeed, is the central
figure within these grim surroundings--Louis himself, whose character,
with its strange mingling of guile and religious fervour, unfathomable
craft and childish superstition, baffled the men of his own day as it
has baffled posterity. He was feared by those who served him, and he was
obeyed, because a terrible alternative awaited the disobedient; but he
was neither loved nor understood. Of love, indeed, he had little need,
and it was not his pleasure that men should understand him.
Very little, however, remains to-day of the “verger du roi Louis” to
show that it was once the home of kings. It has gone the way of most of
the “illusions ... in the good city of Tours with regard to Louis XI.,”
and only a few fragments and “inconsequent lumps” share with some modern
buildings the site of this royal prison of Plessis-les-Tours.
[Illustration: ST. GATIEU, TOURS]
The western façade of Tours Cathedral, with its two small towers, is a
noticeable example of the waning Gothic style. The detail is so
“charmingly executed as almost to induce the belief, in spite of the
fanciful extravagance which it displays, that the architects were
approaching to something new and beautiful when the mania for classic
detail overtook them.” Looking eastward from the west door one notices
the northerly trend of the Cathedral’s axis, commencing from the
transept arches. The choir spreads outward at its first bay, the side
walls not following the alignment of the body of the church. The glass
is both abundant and magnificent in the nave lights, and the enormous
clerestory windows display it to the greatest possible advantage.
Unfortunately, the fine rose window in the north transept is marred by
the cutting across of a vertical pillar, inserted as a support to the
crest of the arch. In both transepts the triforium arches present a
curious and novel arrangement, the reason for which is not very
apparent. The arches are in a double plane, but the openings are not
directly one behind another.
The pier arches of the nave are plain, with simple panel-like spandrils,
the piers themselves supporting a very large clerestory and glazed
triforium. In the latter the heads of the arches are filled in with rich
Flamboyant tracery, either in imitation of the fleur-de-lys, or with
varieties of wheel tracery in double plane. The choir is much earlier
than the nave, and its bays show a beautiful proportion and harmony in
its members, the whole elevation being supported on clustered columns
with stalk capitals and square abacus. In the apse the tracery is a
slight variant from that of the choir; the arch-heads are here filled in
with trefoil instead of quatrefoil tracery. On the north side of the
Cathedral are the remains of some cloisters, joined to the main body by
two flying buttresses.
To most travellers in France the town of Blois is associated with a
château rather than with a cathedral; it is one of a group of towns
known and visited for the historic piles which tower above their grey
roofs--Amboise and Chambord, Langeais and Chenonceaux, Chaumont and
Montrichard. We count Blois with these rather than with the towns famous
for their churches, and the bishopstool comes rather as a surprise, or
as a thing unconsidered. The Cathedral, built in the seventeenth century
and dedicated to St. Louis, occupies a magnificent position, overhanging
the grey water-front of the Loire in a fashion which seems to call for
some nobler building. However, although built according to a curiously
mixed design in bastard Gothic and Renaissance, there is a certain sense
of proportion in the interior of the church, the vaulting being
especially simple and broad in effect. The nave consists of nine bays,
with a low clerestory, terminating in stone panels, which occupy the
place usually assigned to the triforium, and are left in the rough with
a view to subsequent enrichment by sculpture. The examples of adornment
at the east end, however, make one feel that the church has been
mercifully spared any further fantasies from the chisel of the
Renaissance sculptor.
Far better is the Church of St. Nicolas, whose twin towers stand out
dark and sharp midway between the water-front and the overhanging mass
of the Château. It belongs to the tenth and eleventh centuries, and has
not been much restored except by whitewash, which covers most of the
interior, but allows a good deal of old work to be seen, especially in
the north aisle, where, near the pulpit, we find round-headed windows
very deeply splayed. The nave has five bays, and a blind triforium,
consisting of an arcade of four small arches in each bay, the last two
eastward having only three arches set in the blind wall. These last bays
are much ruder than the others, especially on the south side. The
clerestory has twin lights, with a rose in the head of the arch, as is
seen in the Cathedral at Chartres. The transepts are good, and the
little corbel-tables running the whole way round, form a series of
those grotesque and curiously unecclesiastical faces of men and beasts
which we find so often in early church sculpture. In this particular
series a gridiron plays a prominent part, which is curious, as the
church appears to have no connection with Saint Lawrence. Behind the
choir is an old chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph, which has a Romanesque
apse; and it is noticeable that in this part of the church the roof
groining is simple--that is, without ribs. In the lantern, which is in
the form of a cupola, each pendentive is terminated by the figure of a
saint in its niche.
[Illustration: BLOIS]
High above Saint Nicolas a steep flight of steps leads up to the great
Château which has made history for the town below. The most striking
view is from the other side, where the magnificent “aile François
Ier” rises in imposing fashion above the high road; but the entrance
is in the Louis XII. wing to the east, and here the beautiful inner
court opens out a varied display of richness. The eastern wing itself
contains the private apartments of Louis XII. and his wife, Anne de
Bretagne--these are now converted into a local museum and picture
gallery--and the lower storey is in the form of an arcade, with
unrestored capitals of the fifteenth century. Facing this is the wing of
“ruled lines and blank spaces,” constructed by Gaston d’Orléans,
brother of Louis XIII., upon the foundations of a wing erected by his
ancestor, the poet-duke Charles, whom Henry V. took prisoner at
Agincourt, and whose son became Louis XII. The old castle of the Counts
of Blois had been sold to the Orléans family by the last of the line in
1397, and the new possessors, each in his day, occupied themselves in
restoring and embellishing it. So zealous indeed, in this respect, was
Duke Gaston, that, had not fate intervened, not only the west wing but
the entire building would have been pulled down to make way for his
plans. Happily for posterity, this devastation never took place, and the
François Ier wing, the chief treasure of the Château, is still
preserved to us much as it was at the end of the sixteenth century, at
which time Blois may be said to have reached the zenith of its fame in
the history of France. The Château was then a royal residence, and the
roll of its inhabitants forms a long list of illustrious names, foremost
among which stand those of Catherine dé Medici and Charles IX., Henri
III., and the King of Navarre, and the famous Henri de Guise, who met
his death here through the suspicion and jealousy of the king, his
cousin. In the Guise tragedy the chief interest of the Château appears
to centre. Dark hints concerning “le Balafré” are thrown out during the
progress through a succession of dim, empty rooms--council room and
bed-chamber, oratory and private closet, some flooded with sunshine,
others dark with the strange misty curtain that age will sometimes hang
across an old chamber, and through whose thin veil one seems to see the
shades of those old-time kings and queens, walking, plotting and praying
as they did when the Château was alive with the tread of men. All this
appears to lead up to the scene of the Guise murder, and as the guide
reaches the royal bed-chamber and points through a doorway here and down
a passage there, one seems to have reached the heart of the tragedy.
There, in the long council-room, the Balafré stood, warming his hands by
the fire, when the message came that the king awaited him in a cabinet
at the far end of the wing; here, in an ante-room close by, Henri III.
lifted the curtain and watched the enemy to his death; there in the
dark, narrow passage--too narrow even to allow of his drawing
sword--Guise found himself caught like a rat in a trap; here, in the
king’s own chamber, he doubled back for safety, and met his death at the
foot of the royal bed. It is all very thrilling and very real; and
little as there is to love in Henri de Guise, one cannot but pity the
man for the manner of his death; and there seems nothing but justice in
the murder of the king himself a short time afterwards. This second
tragedy took place outside the old dungeon, a gloomy round tower with
cross-barred windows and a heavy iron door, behind which the Cardinal de
Guise, brother of the Balafré, suffered imprisonment at the hands of his
jealous cousin. In the centre of the dungeon floor is a trap door,
which, considering the general atmosphere of the place, one naturally
associates with an oubliette, but which more probably represented the
head of a well, run up through the building in order that the
inhabitants of the castle should not suffer from want of water in siege
time.
It is curious to note that the historical description to which the
visitor listens to-day as he follows his guide through those empty
chambers at Blois is almost exactly the same as that given a hundred and
twenty years ago. Arthur Young, travelling in France in 1787, paid a
visit to Blois, and gives the following account of the Château and its
history: “We viewed the castle for the historical monument it affords
that has rendered it so famous. They show the room where the council
assembled, and the chimney in it before which the Duke of Guise was
standing when the king’s page came to demand his presence in the royal
closet; the door he was entering when stabbed; the tapestry he was in
the act of turning aside; the tower where his brother the cardinal
suffered, with a hole in the floor into the dungeon of Louis XI., of
which the guide tells many horrible stories, in the same tone, from
having told them so often, in which the fellow in Westminster Abbey
gives his monotonous history of the tombs.”
Chapter Eleven
CHARTRES
“Chartres,” says Mr. Henry James, “gives us an impression of extreme
antiquity, but it is an antiquity that has gone down in the world.” It
may be this very decadence that has kept Chartres within itself and
prevented it from growing out into a large pretentious city. Many other
places which rival it in age and association have either swept away all
traces of their antiquity, or else preserved it in dignified contrast to
the modern mushroom town. Chartres has done neither. It is scarcely more
at the present day than a quaint country town with a very old-fashioned
air, a place of steep, twisting streets and quiet little market-squares,
the cathedral rising like a giant from the very midst of the houses.
Round the town runs a boulevard, known as the Tour-de-Ville, and
interesting for the fact that it follows the line of the mediæval
defences--ramparts that kept many enemies at bay when Chartres was a
power in the kingdom of France. Here and there parts of these defences
are still standing, and one fragment in particular forms the foundations
of an old convent. Another remnant of the old fighting days is the Porte
Guillaume, one of the city gates, built when the march of the English
forced every French town to keep itself under bolt and bar. Two round
towers, embattled and machicolated, flank a low archway, and to complete
the mediæval effect, the ancient fosse still remains before the gate,
not grass-grown or choked with rubbish, but filled with a clear stream,
just as it might have been in old days.
[Illustration: CHARTRES FROM THE NORTH]
Autricum of the Carnutes held an important position in Gaul, ranking
very near the great capital of the Senones. In pre-Christian times it
was a famous Druidic centre; but with the advance of Christianity,
Savinian and Potentian, the patron saints of Sens, extended their
mission to Chartres, converted the inhabitants, and built their first
church, according to tradition, upon a Druid grotto. Later on, the town
passed into the possession of a line of counts, who were a very powerful
factor in mediæval France. The first Theobald or Thibaut is said to have
purchased his domain from the sea-king Hasting, who had penetrated
beyond the coast and colonised the lands around the river Eure. His son
and successor, Thibaut le Tricheur, lived in a state of constant war
with Normandy, and seems to have been regarded as a kind of evil
influence by the old Norman chroniclers, whose hero in Thibaut’s day was
naturally their own Richard the Fearless. Another of the line was the
famous Odo, whose ambition went beyond his own states of Chartres and
Blois, and aimed at kingship in Burgundy and even in Italy. Through the
greater part of his reign he carried on also the struggle with Normandy
which had raged so fiercely in Thibaut’s time, besides the standing war
with the Angevin line, represented by Fulk the Black. It was, as Freeman
says, the fact of this common enemy in the house of Chartres which first
brought Anjou and Normandy into direct contact and perhaps laid the
foundations of Anjou’s subsequent connection with England. Chartres,
like Nevers, was made a duchy under François Ier; later it passed
into the Orléans family, whose nominal appanage it has remained ever
since, the eldest son bearing to this day the title of “Duc de
Chartres.” It is also interesting to notice that Henri de Navarre broke
the long succession of coronations at Rheims by being crowned King of
France in Chartres Cathedral, three years after the town had opened its
gates to his army in 1591. Some three hundred years later another enemy
appeared outside the walls, and once again Chartres found itself in the
hands of a foreign power. Mr. Cecil Headlam, in his very interesting
“Story of Chartres,” gives a description of the Prussian occupation,
part of which may be quoted here as showing the foresight of the Mayor,
who in this terrible time, when the whole French nation seemed utterly
demoralised, thought rather of the safeguard of the city and its one
great monument, than of the doubtful and dearly-won glory of a
protracted defence.
“It was on Friday, September 30, 1870, that the Prussian soldiers
appeared for the first time near Chartres. Three weeks later Châteaudun
fell, after a desperate and heroic defence, for which that picturesque
and ancient town paid the dear price of failure. Two days later the
enemy marched in force upon Chartres. The _tirailleurs_ and _mobiles_
and troops of the National Guard, who endeavoured to defend the town,
after vain marching and counter-marching, with the same generous ardour
and utter ineffectiveness as had distinguished the movements of the
other armies before the disasters of Wissembourg, Wörth and Sedan,
returned exhausted. Without firing a shot they had been rendered
incapable of fighting. Fighting in any case would have been useless. It
was wisely decided to capitulate, and on the 21st the Mayor and Prefect
of the Department drove out to Morancez to save the city and Cathedral,
by surrendering them to General von Wittich, from the inevitable
destruction of which Châteaudun had given them a terrible example. What
they saw on their way of the French defence and the Prussian advance
convinced civilians and military men alike that it was impossible to
hope to defend Chartres.”
At the head of the Rue St. Jean, where it leads into the Place du
Châtelet, one obtains the first and best view of the two beautiful
spires at the west end of the Cathedral. The southern tower, dating back
to the twelfth century and conceived in a style which harmonises with
the broad and massive design of the whole building, is an example of
what was contemplated as a finish to the other towers of the Cathedral.
The northern tower, built in 1507 by Jean le Texier, well deserves its
reputation as the most beautiful Gothic spire ever designed. “The one,
fashioned by the Byzantine chisel, sprang into complete being in the
heroic ages of faith in the days of war ... the other rose, after a long
peace, under the hands of the still Christian architects of the
Renaissance, when all dangers and difficulties had been surmounted.”
On contemplating the plan on which Chartres Cathedral was built one is
struck with the enormous space which has been allotted to the choir.
Here the new religious cult finds its earliest expression, greater
provisions are made for its ceremonials, larger spaces are given both in
choir and transepts for its gorgeous ritual than we find in Paris,
Soissons or Lâon. Bishops, priests, deacons, choristers and serving-men
needed a wider platform for the ministration of the sacred rites of the
Church, and especially to this end was the Cathedral planned out. It is
said that its construction was carried out with incredible rapidity in
the desire to meet the pressing requirements of the people, who demanded
that the Cathedral should be not only the house of prayer for the bishop
and his canons, but essentially the mother church of the humblest of her
worshippers.
The prevalence of a style, more or less uniform, with its main
attributes harmonious and congruous, is the resultant of these forces
working together. The completion of the Cathedral was carried out about
1240, and in 1250 were added the two porches at the entrance to the
transepts. The sacristy was built in the thirteenth century, and a
century later the little chapel of Saint Piat was attached to the
eastern apse. The shortness of the nave is attributed to the desire to
utilise the foundations of the old crypt for the choir and not to extend
the building farther westward than the two existing towers. Between
these two points, the walls of the crypt and the western towers, the
nave had to be constructed and without any possibility of further
extension.
[Illustration: CHARTRES]
No less than nine spires were originally designed and their towers
actually commenced. What a magnificent effect would have been produced
had they been completed! Standing on the high ground of the city,
Chartres with its clustering pinnacles would have been one of the
wonders of Christendom. The magnificent glass of the thirteenth century
is so deep in tone that upon entering the building one is conscious of a
darkness that can almost be felt, so much at variance with the effect of
the interior of most large French Cathedrals.
The two porches placed outside the transept doors are the subject of a
panegyric from the pen of Viollet-le-Duc. He considers them as the most
beautiful and harmonious additions ever made to an existing building,
and their architects proved themselves to be artists of the very first
rank. No more beautiful specimen of a portal of the thirteenth century
can elsewhere be found to exist; glorious and rejoicing in colour and in
gold, and of surpassing sculpture and full of impressive and solemn
statuary.
[Illustration: RUE DE LA PORTE GUILLAUME, CHARTRES]
Near Chartres there are two small towns which might well be taken in a
day’s excursion; both are connected with Chartres historically and both
have a certain interest of their own certainly not devoid of attraction
to one in search of antiquities. One is Châteaudun, whose fall during
the war of 1870 was, as has been quoted above, the signal for the
surrender of Chartres; the other is Vendôme, the township of the ancient
feudal county. From Chartres it is Châteaudun that lies first in our
road. It is a straight, neat little town--most of the streets cut one
another at right angles--and the smoke of the Franco-Prussian war still
seems to hover about the place; one of its chief memories, indeed, is
the great fight in October, 1870, when a bare thousand _franc-tireurs_
of the national guard kept the town for half a day against a Prussian
army of ten times their strength, and the quiet market-square--now
called the Place du 18 Octobre--was transformed into a battle-field. All
the heroism that the day called forth, however, could not save the town
from being sacked and burnt--the last of a long series of
conflagrations, lasting from the sixth to the nineteenth century, that
has won for the little town its cheerful, hopeful motto: “Extincta
revivisco.” Certainly Châteaudun has risen from the flames with a fresh
lease of its quiet life, but it has been completely modernised, and
except for a few narrow alleys sloping down towards the river, which
would seem to have escaped the general devastation, there is little that
does not belong to to-day. This is, however, making an exception of the
Château overlooking the Loire; a great exception, since at present all
that there is to see in Châteaudun consists in this square pile on the
brow of the hill; the rest, whatever it may once have been, is only a
memory; and even the Château itself hardly seems a part of the town,
since it is not until we have left the little white-painted streets
behind that we realise its existence, and then it comes as a gigantic
surprise; a huge, square, turreted mass, on its platform of rock,
looking away over the rolling meadow lands, untroubled through all the
years of siege and conflagration. Thibaut le Tricheur, Count of
Champagne, built it in the tenth century; it was rebuilt in the twelfth
century, and again by its seigneur, the famous “Bastard of Orléans,” one
of the most devoted followers of Joan the Maid. Finally, under Louis
XII., François d’Orléans-Longueville applied himself to fresh
renovations, and built the splendid façade overhanging the Loire.
Considering that the Duc de Vendôme has always been a title of some
importance in France since the early part of the sixteenth century, and
the Comtes de Vendôme a power in the feudal world before that, one
might feel rather surprised not to find the town itself presenting a
more imposing aspect. Vendôme is a picturesque place, but it is more of
a long straggling village than anything else, and it is only the ivied
ruins on the cliff that take one back--with a stretch of imagination, it
must be confessed--to the days of feudalism. Vendôme was originally, it
is thought, a Gallic township under the name of Vindocinum; it was then
fortified by the Romans, evangelised by Saint Bienheuré, and finally
became the seat of a feudal count about the end of the tenth century. In
1030 was founded the abbey of La Trinité, whose church is one of the
first “monuments” of Vendôme. It dates from the thirteenth and fifteenth
centuries; the beautiful Transition façade is well worth notice, and so
is the belfry tower, separated from the church and tapering up to a tall
stone spire. Inside the church there are some fine choir stalls of the
fifteenth century, of which the carving of the _miséricordes_ is very
interesting in its variety and quaintness of design.