whether in or out of Poitiers, does, nevertheless, stand out as a
landmark in the long struggle between English and French. Having stormed
and taken the Castle of Pomerantin, Prince Edward marched downwards
through Anjou and Touraine; and from the scarcity of fodder on the way
he began to conclude that the French king could not be far off. Arrived
at a village near Chauvigny, on the Vienne, he engaged in a skirmish
with some of the enemy, and learned that John’s army had marched forward
towards Poitiers; therefore, forbidding any further engagement, he
pushed on with all possible speed, and came up with the French some
leagues from the town, on the plains of Maupertuis. The French king
himself was just about to enter Poitiers, but hearing that the English
had come up and were attacking his rear-guard, he turned back into the
fields and there encamped his forces. Meanwhile the English entrenched
themselves in a well-guarded position between hedges and vineyards, and
waited there until the morning, when John’s army rode out into the
plain. “Then might be seen all the nobility of France, richly dressed
out in brilliant armour, with banners and pennons gallantly displayed;
for all the flower of the French nobility were there; no knight or
squire, for fear of dishonour, dared remain at home.” At the last moment
an attempt at mediation was made by the Cardinal de Périgord; but as the
French king would listen to no terms save unconditional surrender, which
the English prince refused, his labour was in vain; and the following
day the armies drew up in line of battle. “When the Prince of Wales saw,
from the departure of the Cardinal without being able to obtain any
honourable terms, that a battle was inevitable, and that the King of
France held both him and his army in great contempt, he thus addressed
himself to them: ‘Now, my gallant fellows, what though we be a small
company as in regard to the puissance of our enemy, let us not be cast
down therefore, for victory lieth not in the multitude of people, but
where God will send it; if it fortune that the journey be ours, we shall
be the most honoured people of all the world; and if we die in our right
quarrel, I have the king, my father, and brethren, and also ye have good
friends and kinsmen; these shall avenge us. Therefore, for God’s sake, I
require you to do your devoirs this day, for if God be pleased and
Saint George, this day ye shall see me a good knight.’” Then the battle
began in earnest, the English shouting “Saint George for Guienne!” The
French answering with “Montjoie Saint Denis!” Froissart gives a very
long and detailed account of the fight in all its part, with lists of
the nobles and knights who were killed and wounded, and in many cases
stories of their several adventures--none of which have place here. It
will be enough to say with the old chronicler himself, that, in spite of
the odds against the Black Prince, “it often happens that fortune in
love and war turns out more favourable and wonderful than could have
been hoped for or expected. To say the truth, this battle which was
fought near Poitiers, in the Plains of Beauvois and Maupertuis, was very
bloody and perilous; many gallant deeds of arms were performed that were
never known, and the combatants on each side suffered much.” The rest is
known to every one, the taking of King John of France, the gallant work
of the archers, and the commendation of the Prince by his father, who
had watched the fight from afar.
Even without the battle the story of Poitiers is a sufficiently varied
one, and connected in a great measure with the story of England, if it
be remembered that Eleanor, wife of our Henry II., was also Countess of
Poitou and brought it to England as part of her dowry; and in English
hands it remained until Philip Augustus saw fit to confiscate all our
French territory in 1204. After the peace of Brétigny Poitou passed to
England once more, only to be surrendered to Bertrand du Guesclin in the
course of the next ten years. Here at Poitiers Charles VII. was
proclaimed King of France; and, in contrast, it is likewise interesting
to note that here also was held a court of inquiry upon the
misdemeanours of Joan of Arc, by whose aid Charles was not only
proclaimed but crowned King. After this the English prestige in France
dwindled to nothing, and therefore the joint history stops at this
point, and the history of Poitou and Poitiers stands for France alone.
Chapter Fifteen
LA ROCHELLE AND BORDEAUX
La Rochelle calls to mind two things principally: first, the great
resistance of the Huguenots in the sixteenth century, and then the siege
and the expeditions under Buckingham in the early days of Charles I.
These two events are really part of the same struggle for supremacy
between Calvinist and Romanist, only divided by a period of quiescence
under the rule of Henri de Navarre, who, having professed both faiths in
his day, probably knew how to keep the two parties at peace. Before the
religious wars La Rochelle was known as a flourishing and peaceful
seaport town; but no sooner had Condé and Coligny shown their faces
there in 1568 as leaders of the Huguenot faction, than a spirit of
warfare, provocative as well as defensive, seemed to pervade the town,
and even on the high seas the cruisers of La Rochelle were a terror to
the Romanist, since in the cause of the true faith no Huguenot stopped
at piracy and plunder. From this first struggle La Rochelle emerged
with flying colours, but in the days of Richelieu and Buckingham it was
less successful, and traces of its surrender exist to-day in the mole,
cutting off the outer harbour, which Richelieu laid down to prevent the
English fleet from gaining further entrance to the port.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE HARBOR, LA ROCHELLE]
The first attack on Buckingham’s part was made in the summer of 1627. A
war with France, impending only in 1625, but swift to take definite
shape, was among the inconvenient legacies bequeathed by James I. to his
son. With the utmost difficulty a forced loan was obtained from
Parliament in order to meet the war expenses, and the Duke of Buckingham
was put in command of the fleet which sailed from Portsmouth in June to
the relief of the Huguenots whom Richelieu was besieging in La Rochelle.
This task was not an easy one. Before gaining the harbour the fleet must
pass the fort of Saint Martin on the island of Ré. This island had been
strongly garrisoned by Richelieu, but the English squadron lay between
the fort and the mainland, cutting off all possibility of relief; and
after being blockaded for nearly two months the French commander
signified to Buckingham his willingness to surrender the next morning.
The duke was in the highest spirits when the welcome news arrived, and
lay down to rest that night with the joyful certainly of carrying all
before him, driving the Cardinal from before the port and entering La
Rochelle in triumph. But the morning broke on a very different picture.
During the night an easterly gale had sprung up and had blown a fleet of
French provision boats over to Ré, through the very midst of the English
ships; and once more Saint Martin’s prepared for defence. Nothing
daunted, Buckingham sent to England for fresh troops, and if the supply
had depended upon the king he might still have gained his victory; but
the Parliament, now a growing power in England, and a power whose growth
was making itself felt, overruled the royal pleasure, and found here the
long-wished for opportunity of crushing out the war, of which the
country was heartily tired, by refusing to grant further supplies.
Probably the fact that Buckingham was no favourite with the people also
helped to turn the scale against him. At any rate a French force came up
before any word was sent from England, and the duke was obliged to
withdraw from La Rochelle with considerable losses. The sequel is well
known. In the following year Charles prorogued his troublesome
Parliament, and once more the favourite set off for Portsmouth, never to
reach France, since the dagger of John Felton put an end to his
ambitions and avenged, so said the English people, his country’s
wrongs. Thus La Rochelle was left entirely to the tender mercies of
Richelieu. The Huguenot power was utterly broken by the year’s siege
which followed, and La Rochelle found itself despoiled of the prestige
which it enjoyed as the stronghold of the Protestant faith.
[Illustration: THE HARBOUR OF LA ROCHELLE]
La Rochelle of to-day is perhaps little known to the casual traveller.
Inland France has so many attractions that most travellers never get so
far as the sea-coast; great churches and great rivers draw them
elsewhere, and if they want sea breezes there is always Trouville or
Etretat ready to hand. Nevertheless, La Rochelle is one of the most
beautiful of sea-ports in France; and this is no faint praise, for all
towns of this kind are bound to have a peculiar charm of their own--that
kind of charm which belongs to a harbour, and the coming and going of
ships, and the open sea beyond. To this the town adds certain
attractions of its own, among which are the beautiful colours of the
boat-sails, and the old grey forts guarding the harbour on either side.
These ancient sentinel towers are relics of the prosperity of La
Rochelle, and date back to a day before Buckingham sailed up to the
port, before the name of Huguenot had ever been heard in France. On the
left hand the Tour Saint-Nicolas, built at the end of the fourteenth
century, raises four round crenellated turrets above the harbour; on
the other side stands the Tour de la Chaîne, a grim, solid-looking round
fortress; and farther on still may be seen the stone _flèche_ of the
Tour de la Lanterne, looking from a distance like the spire of a church.
And the mention of churches brings us naturally to the Cathedral, which,
built in the middle of the eighteenth century, has so very little to say
for itself that one cannot help feeling it to be a poor set-off to the
sea-board of the town; though perhaps it might in any case be useless to
look for beauty of this kind in a town whose inhabitants ranked the
adorning of churches as one of the deadly sins of Rome. This cathedral
was, it is true, built long after La Rochelle had ceased to be a
Huguenot stronghold; but when we remember that the beauty of any former
church would have fallen a victim to the fanatic’s hammer, we can
forgive the architect, and cease to mourn for what might have been. The
Cathedral of La Rochelle is not a thing of beauty, but at any rate it
has not displaced anything that might have pleased us better.
From La Rochelle to Bordeaux the road runs by heavy-leafed plantations
of every kind of tree, notably acacias, whose great size is particularly
apparent to an English eye. Then, as the Bordelais comes nearer, we run
down to the smooth, peaceful Charente, winding quietly through its
meadow lands, not unlike the upper reaches of the Thames, and yet very
unlike in one respect, since the water is completely deserted, and even
in the height of summer few pleasure boats disturb its smooth surface.
Boating as an amusement _per se_ has very little place in the programme
of a French country gentleman, though bathing and fishing are both
included in it; and the same thing is noticeable nearer Paris, on the
Marne, where a pair-oar gig, if ever it got there, would part its
timbers through sheer neglect, and break up in a few months.
Bordeaux itself is worthy of its reputation, and is certainly, strictly
speaking, a “handsome” city, with a waterway almost as grand as the
Thames at London, spanned by a beautiful bridge of red-brick and stone,
built in 1822, which might well serve as a model for some of our London
bridges. It is a pleasant place enough when once the fact of its being a
large and modern city is accepted; and although it has not the romance
of the inland hill-towns nor the picturesque situation of La Rochelle,
it has always been a city of note, ever since the Gauls came down to the
river and called their settlement Burdigala. For three centuries it
belonged to England; the same Countess Eleanor, of whom we heard at
Poitiers, brought it to her English husband, Henry II., and for some
reason it does not seem to have been included in the general
confiscation of English territory under Philip Augustus, so it remained
an English town and shared in English victories and defeats until
Charles VII. was crowned, and the English retired by degrees to their
own land. Bordeaux was also the birthplace of poor, weak, well-meaning
Richard II.; and his father, the victor of Poitiers, held his court in
the town for some time. Here he held, too, his conference upon the
affairs of Castile.
Don Pedro was at that time engaged in a struggle for the Castilian
throne with his brother, who was not the lawful heir. Neither prince
seems to have been blameless in his conduct, and Edward declared that he
only upheld the claim of Pedro on account of his lawful birth, and not
from any individual deserts; but this declaration apparently failed to
satisfy the rest of the English and Gascons within Bordeaux, and it was
finally decided to summon a council, composed of all the barons in
Aquitaine, “when Don Pedro might lay before them his situation, and his
means of satisfying them, should the prince undertake to conduct him
back to his own country, and to do all in his power to replace him upon
his throne.” The conference resulted in a decision in favour of Pedro,
and by order of the English king a certain number of knights and
men-at-arms were sent from Bordeaux to escort the claimant back to Spain
and to help him to regain his own, all expenses being paid by Castile--a
frugal method of rendering aid!
The Cathedral is attributed to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and
as it now stands consists of a large nave, without aisles, which were
swept away for purposes of roof construction, as at Angers and in
Notre-Dame-de-la-Coûture at Le Mans. According to Mr. Bond, an early
tower was built in 550, which was noticed by Fortunatus. In plan the
building shows the influence of the well-known church of the Cordeliers
at Toulouse. “Its western portion is a vast nave without aisles, sixty
feet wide internally and nearly two hundred feet in length. Its
foundations show that, like that at Angoulême, it was originally roofed
by three great domes; but being rebuilt in the thirteenth century, it is
now covered by an intersecting vault ... and an immense array of flying
buttresses to support its thrust, all which might have been dispensed
with had the architects retained the original simple and more beautiful
form of roof.”
Within easy distance of Bordeaux is Libourne, a little town upon the
Dordogne, which, though now overshadowed by the great port of the
Garonne, was in the Middle Ages of almost equal importance in the
wine-growing country, and had a special interest as being one of the
_villes bastides_ found in several places in the south of France,
especially in Guyenne. These really owe their origin to England, for
they were founded by Edward I. during his French wars as refuges for
those unable to take an active part in the struggle.
Mr. Barker, in his “Two Summers in Guyenne,” gives a very interesting
description of these towns, noticing particularly the straight lines of
their streets. “In contrast to the typical mediæval town that grew up
slowly around some abbey or at the foot of some strong castle that
protected it, and in the building of which, if any method was observed,
it was that of making the streets as crooked as possible, to assist the
defenders in stopping the inward rush of an enemy, the streets of the
_bastide_ were all drawn at right angles to each other.” The _bastides_
were built merely for shelter, not, as was the case with other towns,
for defence as well, though in the lawless days of the thirteenth
century it was sometimes necessary even here to put up a wall, palisade
and moat. Libourne has a remnant of such fortification in a quaint old
round Tour de l’Horloge with machicolations and a pointed roof. The term
_bastide_ was also applied to a single work of defence which, although
isolated, formed part of a continuous system of fortification. A single
house outside the walls of a town was also called a _bastide_.
Passing out from Libourne, we reach the very heart of this wine-growing
country--a true country of the south it seems in summer, with the
endless stretches of vineyards--row after row of green, twisting,
climbing wreaths round their stiff, straight poles, under a blazing
southern sky, and every now and then a single hill rising suddenly out
of the plain, whilst the river slips quietly away in the distance to the
sea. On, or rather in, one of these hills the hermit Émilion fixed his
cave-dwelling, far back in the legendary years of history; and
now--strange contrast!--the town founded by this ascetic, abstemious
saint owes its fame to the purple juice of the grape, and sends forth
from its slopes not water from his dripping well, but good red wine to
gladden the heart of man. A visitor to Saint-Émilion in early summer
will find a curious greenness over everything--not only in the freshness
of the vineyards. When evening falls the very labourers rise from their
task and move home through the dusk like so many green spectres--though
from no other cause than from their constant watering of the vines with
sulphur-water to kill off the devouring insects.
[Illustration: BORDEAUX]
Irrespective of wine-growers, Saint-Émilion has many things to be
seen on its crescent-shaped hill. There is the wonderful church, carved
out of the cliff-face, now in ruins, but possessing store enough of
massive square piers and round-headed arches to bear witness to its
ancient grandeur; and a separate Gothic tower and spire of the twelfth
century points a long tapering finger above the narrow creeper-grown
streets and low, crowded roofs on the hill-side. The church to which the
tower really belongs is not this curious monument carved from the rock,
but the collegiate church farther up the hill, now used as a parish
church. Other monuments there are besides--the icy-cold, moss-grown
vault known as the “Grotte de Saint-Émilion,” where superstitious
maidens drop pins into the well to find out when they shall be married;
the ruined convent of the Cordeliers, with its grass-grown courts and
ivy-covered cloister arcades, and the great walnut tree whose branches
shade an empty, silent place where once the brothers chanted and the
novices worked at their simple tasks; and the cave-dwellings, where
seven of the Girondists hid from the wrath of the Terror, sheltered and
fed by a kindly couple who paid later for their good nature by the
guillotine, after four of the seven refugees had been captured and
executed.
The ancient Saint-Émilion--the town to which most of these buildings
carry us back--is in reality an old English fortress, growing from the
oppidum of the Gauls to the fortified stronghold which passed to Edward
I. and continued, with a few interruptions, to enjoy the privileges of a
royal borough of England until the fifteenth century.
Chapter Sixteen
SENS, AUXERRE, AND TROYES
The Senones, who settled on the banks of the river Yonne and founded the
city of Agenticum, which we know to-day as Sens, were one of the most
influential people in Gaul--even the Parisii were considered of less
account--and did not submit to the Roman yoke until the final defeat of
Vercingetorix. The change of dominion, however, in no way detracted from
the importance of their capital city, but rather enhanced it, since the
conquerors made the town metropolis of the fourth Lugdunensis, and were
at some pains to rebuild it in a fashion befitting its position. Six
great highways met within its walls; arches, aqueducts and amphitheatres
sprang up all over the city, and Agenticum henceforth became a
prosperous and powerful stronghold, well able to withstand the
incursions of later days, of which there were many, on the part of the
Franks and the Saracens and, finally, of the Normans.
Christianity was introduced by the martyr-saints Savinian and Potentian,
who, as at Chartres, built the first church in the city, thus laying, so
tradition has it, the foundations of the Cathedral which was to come in
after times. The town then became an archbishopric, and later, like most
towns of any standing, a hereditary countship, the proximity of the two
overlords, spiritual and temporal, leading not infrequently to
disastrous results, especially when in the twelfth century a communal
power sprang up and contributed a third factor to the contest.
In 1234 Louis IX. married Marguerite de Provence in the Cathedral of
Saint Etienne, and on his return from the Holy Land, five years later,
with the precious relics purchased from the Emperor of Constantinople,
the reliquary and its contents were paraded through the streets in a
palanquin, borne by the king and his brother, Robert d’Artois, who
walked bare-headed and bare-footed at the head of the procession,
casting aside all their royal state--which, indeed, poor Louis would
have gladly left for ever--to set an example of reverent homage to the
people of Sens. Thomas à Becket lived for some months in the Abbey of
Sainte-Colombe by the river-side, founded by one of the Chlothars in the
seventh century in memory of the young virgin saint who suffered
martyrdom under the rule of Aurelian.
Sens, on its quiet, graceful little river, “bending ... link after link
through a never-ending rustle of poplar-trees,” is a picturesque place,
like most towns which have left their importance behind them in the
Middle Ages, and have come down to modern days unmodernised. Standing on
the far bank of the Yonne, looking across the river reaches, one gets a
very delightful picture of the town, almost like that of some of our
English Cathedral cities--the shining river, the green water-meadows,
and above them the deeper green of the grand old trees, clustering round
the great church, whose high grey tower rises from their midst, watching
the town, meadows and river by day and by night, when men wake and when
they take their rest, as it has watched ever since William the architect
built up its stones and brought their pattern across the water that the
church of Britain’s first Christian city might share the glories of her
sister in France.
Sens is not very well known to travellers, although there is no
cathedral in the whole breadth of France which ought to be dearer in the
eyes of every Englishman, on account of its being in all probability the
parent of the choir of Canterbury. Hither Becket is said to have fled,
and to have sought sanctuary at the altar of St. Thomas against the
persecution of Henry II. Viollet-le-Duc describes St. Etienne as a
cathedral unique both in plan and style of architecture--a mixture of
arches both round and pointed, such as we find in the choir of
Canterbury, showing how much it is under the influence of the Burgundy
school. This is proved by the great similarity of plan between the other
Burgundy cathedrals, and it is surmised that after the eleventh century
Autun, Langres, Auxerre and Sens possessed certain dispositions of plan
peculiar to themselves, which were adopted in the Eastern portions of
Canterbury. There appears to be no precise information as to the early
foundation of the Cathedral of Sens, and the architect who designed it
is unknown. The west front exhibits a number of fine sculptures relating
to the lives of St. Stephen, St. John, and other saints; in the central
portion, which dates from the end of the twelfth century, religion has
given place to the arts and sciences, which are represented by twelve
sculptured figures, now in a mutilated condition--Grammar, Medicine (a
figure holding plants), Rhetoric (giving a discourse), Painting
(represented drawing on a tablet placed on the knee), Astronomy, Music,
Philosophy, &c. Under each figure is sculptured an animal or monster; in
one case a lion is devouring a child, an elephant carrying a tower....
The “encyclopædic spirit” was dominant in the twelfth century, and in
the object lesson of these stones an ignorant and unlettered crowd could
find its elementary instruction.
[Illustration: SENS]
Auxerre, which is about twelve miles from the main line between Paris
and Dijon, may be considered as an outpost lying on the threshold of the
Morvan country. Many of the towns in this district, notably Semur and
Avallon, are built on large granite bosses protruding through the
oolitic formation. Auxerre possesses churches as fine as those of any
other city of its size in France. As one enters the town by the lower of
the two bridges which cross the Yonne, the three churches--St. Pierre,
St. Etienne and St. Germain--suddenly burst into view. On the left is
St. Pierre, with its picturesque tower and forecourt entered through a
Renaissance gateway; the Cathedral of St. Etienne with its single tower,
high nave, and girdle of flying buttresses, stands on the highest ground
in the centre of the group; and further eastwards the abbey church of
St. Germain, detached from its spire, spreads out along the beautiful
river front of the Yonne.