IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--_continued_
BOULOGNE
Boulogne now, as in the days of Arthur Young, is surrounded with bright
and pleasant villas and country houses, though many of the châteaux
which Young was so much surprised to find inhabited by country gentlemen
attending to their duties and living on their estates have disappeared.
It is not only a larger and a more lively place than Calais; it is a
more picturesque and a more interesting place. The old walls and
ramparts of the upper town make such a striking contrast with the modern
streets and squares of the lower town as reminds one vaguely of Quebec,
the Channel coming into the landscape like the St. Lawrence. As at
Quebec, too, the two civilisations of France and of England meet without
mingling; and at Boulogne, as at Quebec, the French type, if not the
stronger of the two, certainly proves itself to be the subtler, and
decides the local physiognomy.
I spent an hour at Boulogne, with a friend who now fills an important
ecclesiastical position in one of the provinces of Central France, and
who was passing a few weeks on the Channel for his health. He is one of
the few French churchmen I personally know who heartily agree with
Cardinal Manning in thinking that the abolition of the Concordat would
greatly strengthen the Church in France, even if it involved a further
serious sacrifice of the proprietary rights of the clergy. 'The way in
which the people have come forward to the support of the congreganist
schools against, the oppressive measures adopted in the law of 1886,' he
said, 'confirms my old conviction, that a complete separation of the
Church from the State in France, whatever its effect might be upon the
State, would strengthen the Church.'
He cited a number of instances within his own knowledge in which rival
communes had established, and were carrying on, at the direct expense of
the local farmers and residents, free or congreganist schools, while, of
course, at the same time they were paying taxes for the lay public
schools to which they would not send their children. 'And this in
spite,' he said, 'of the ingenious devices with which the law of 1886
bristles for making the establishment of free and Christian schools
difficult and expensive. For example, to begin with, the legislature
actually tried to prevent us from calling our schools free schools,
though as schools supported by the free subscriptions of the people they
were distinctly "free" schools, as distinguished from the schools
established by the law at the expense of the taxpayers. We were gravely
informed that it was an act of war to call a free school free! In this
same petty and childish spirit the congregations are called
"associations" in the text of the law. When a free school is to be
opened, the teacher who is to have charge of it must run the gauntlet of
a series of public officers, all of them, if they are on good terms with
the Government, presumably hostile to him as a Christian. He begins with
the mayor of the Commune, who may object to his opening the school in
the place he has chosen, on grounds of "good morals or of hygiene."
Then he must go through with the Prefect of the Department, the Academic
Inspector, and the Procureur of the Republic.'
'That is to say,' I asked, 'the law officer of the department? Why
should he be brought into the business?'
'Why, indeed,' replied my friend. 'You must ask M. Ferry or M.
Clémenceau. He can stir up the Academic Inspector to make some objection
to the opening of the free school, if the Academic Inspector does not
find and make an objection himself. If no objections are made within a
month the school may be opened. If objections are made they must be made
before the Council of the Department within a month. If the Council
support the objections, the teacher must appeal from the decision to the
Academic Inspector within ten days, and the Inspector must submit this
appeal to the Superior Council of Public Instruction at the next ensuing
session of that body. Now the Superior Council only meets twice a year,
and as the appeal, according to the law, is only required to be heard
"with the least possible delay," you will see that nothing can be easier
than for the Academic Inspector and the Procureur between them to keep a
decision in the air for months, or for a year, or even longer, and
pending the appeal the school cannot be opened.
'As for the departmental councils, which are first to consider the
objections made to the opening of the school, they no longer include, as
they did under the Empire, representatives of the Catholic clergy, the
Protestant sects, and the Israelites. All of these are struck out of the
councils by this law of 1886, though fully ninety-nine hundredths of all
the taxes paid to support the machinery, not only of public education
but of the State, are paid by the Catholics, Protestants, and
Israelites. Nor are the councils any longer allowed to elect their own
vice-presidents. The prefect, a government _employé_, presides over the
councils. The Academic Inspector, another government _employé_, is
officially the president; four councillors-general, elected by the whole
body of the council-general of the department, sit on the Departments of
Primary Instruction Council, as do also the director or directors of the
Normal Schools of Public Teachers, and four teachers, two male and two
female, to be elected by the whole body of lay public school teachers of
both sexes in the department, all of them paid _employés_ of the
Government; and finally, two inspectors of public primary education
nominated by the Minister of Public Instruction. So, as you see, out of
a council consisting of fourteen members, ten are paid servants of the
Government, directly concerned to discourage the development of the
Christian schools. If questions and disputes between the lay public
schools and the free Christian schools came before this council, one lay
and one congreganist teacher may be admitted to join the council. But
the wise and just provision of the earlier law, that two or more
magistrates of the highest repute should be members of these councils,
has been deliberately struck out of this aggressive law of 1886.
'Is it possible,' he said, 'to mistake either the spirit or the object
of such a law?
'What gives me confidence and hope is the unquestionable effect which
the law has had upon the religious life of France. It has aroused and
stimulated it to more vigour and energy than I have seen it show for
years past. If only the Church in France were to-day as free from any
official connection with the State as it is in your country, I believe
we should see such a revival of Catholic faith as has not been known in
Europe for centuries.
'Do you remember,' he went on, 'how Ferry went to Rome after his
expulsion from power? Yes? And doubtless you know what efforts he made
there at that time to bring about a subterranean understanding between
himself and the Vatican?'
'He is the only one of these Opportunists who really has a head on his
shoulders, and you will find that he is under no illusions as to the
possibility of any working alliance between the Opportunists and the
Radicals which can save the former from going to the wall, like the
Girondins in 1793.
'Perhaps,' he said, laughingly, 'we may live to see M. Ferry doing
penance in a white sheet, with a candle in his hand, on the way to a
seat in a monarchical Cabinet! Though I am no politician, yet--mark my
words!--this republic has been so mismanaged that now it cannot live
without the Radicals--and it cannot live with them!
'As for the Church; if you want to see what life and energy it is
showing in its work, come and see me in the autumn. I will show you in
the Limousin one of the establishments of the Congregation of the Holy
Cross, or you can go into Mayenne and see twelve or fifteen of them. Or
you ought to go to Ruille-sur-la-Loire, to see the modest cradle of this
great congregation, which now, from its mother-house at Neuilly, is
sending out Catholic life and faith all over the world, and the pulse of
which is beating higher in France to-day than at any time since that
true and simple servant of God, Dujarié, took it upon himself, from his
obscure little parsonage, to begin the restoration of the Church from
the crash of the Terror and the calamities of the First Empire.'
'How many years ago was it,' I asked, 'when this Congregation began its
work in the United States?'
'Not quite fifty years ago,' he replied, 'and, as you know, its schools
are flourishing in all parts of your Union, from the University (in
Indiana) of Our Lady of the Lake, to New Orleans and New Jersey, and
from Wisconsin to Texas. It numbers its pupils, too, by thousands here
at home in France.
'I ask you to join me in the Limousin because I hope to be there in
October, and then I can show you at Limoges what I am sure you would
like to see--one of our best cathedrals, and some beautiful old glass in
St.-Michel and St.-Pierre, not to mention the enamels still hidden away
here and there in certain houses I wot of!'
ST.-OMER
Two of the most interesting places in the Pas-de-Calais are St.-Omer,
once a name of terror to the worthy Englishmen who went in constant fear
of the Pope and wooden shoes, and Aire-sur-la-Lys, which now embraces
within its communal limits all that remains to-day of the once famous
and important city of Thérouanne, the ancient capital of Morinia, and
for thirty years the episcopal seat of the great Swiss bishop, St.-Omer,
who made North-Eastern Gaul Christian in the seventh century.
St.-Omer still preserves a certain grave and austere physiognomy,
half-Spanish and half-scholastic; and it is easy for the imagination to
people its quiet streets with the English and Irish students who
frequented its collegiate halls from the days of Guy Faux to the days of
Daniel O'Connell. But its importance is now military, not theological.
M. Pierre de la Gorce, the accomplished historian of the Revolution of
1848, who lived here seven years as a magistrate, and who still resides
here because he finds in the place 'a still air of delightful studies'
congenial to his tastes and favourable to his historical labours, told
me, in the course of a most interesting afternoon which I passed here
with him, that the town is full of families living here on their
incomes; and in going about the streets I was struck with the general
air of quiet and unobtrusive well-being which marks the people. In his
position as a magistrate, M. de la Gorce had the best possible
opportunities for gauging the moral character of the inhabitants, and he
assured me that during the whole period of his residence in St.-Omer,
extending now over twelve or thirteen years, he has never known more
than one serious domestic scandal to disturb the even tenour of its
social life. Of how many towns of twenty thousand inhabitants could the
same thing be truly said in England or the United States? During all
these years, too, M. de la Gorce tells me, only two cases of alleged
misconduct on the part of priests have occurred in St.-Omer, and in one
of these cases the allegation was proved malignant and unfounded.
Politically, St.-Omer seems to be strongly Republican. In 1886 it gave
the Government candidate a majority of 1,281 votes on a total of 6,623,
whereas in Boulogne at the same election the Republicans were beaten in
the southern division, and carried the whole city by only a majority of
1,331 votes out of a total of 8,233.
What I heard in St.-Omer of the officers stationed there was
particularly interesting. There is a large garrison, and the greatest
pains are taken by the officers not only with the military discipline,
but with the schooling and general conduct of the troops. My own
observation leads me to think this true, not of St.-Omer only, but of
all the considerable garrison towns which I have visited in France
during the past six or seven years. The old type of swashbuckling,
absinthe-tippling, rakehelly French officer of whom, during the last
years of the Empire, one saw and heard so much, seems to have passed
away into history and literature. However it may be with the
'gaiter-buttons' in the next great war, I do not believe the staff of
the next invading army will have much to teach the French officers of
to-day, either about the principles of scientific warfare or about the
topography of France.
I am inclined to think that there are more French officers in St.-Omer
alone to-day who can read and understand German than there were in all
France in 1870. The _morale_ and carriage of the soldiers, too, are
distinctly higher. The calling of men of all ranks and conditions under
the colours has necessarily raised the moral and social level of the
rank and file as well as of the officers; and it is quite certain that
the army holds a higher place in the estimation of the better classes in
France than it used to hold. M. de la Gorce cited to me several
instances, here at St.-Omer, of young ladies of excellent family, three
of them at least considerable heiresses, who have married young officers
of merit solely because they were officers of merit, and who have gladly
turned their backs on the flutter and glitter of fashionable Paris to
share the quiet, unpretending quarters, and take a sympathetic interest
in the serious military career of their husbands in this rather
out-of-the-way garrison town.
I do not find M. de la Gorce sanguine as to any early solution of the
political problems with which France is still wrestling after a hundred
years. He makes no secret of his conviction that nothing but a return to
the constitutional monarchy can give the country lasting peace at home,
or real influence abroad. But his impression seems to be that time alone
can bring this about. He would have the royalists unfurl their banner,
go into the elections with a plain declaration of their political creed,
and await the progress of events. He cited, as a proof of the wisdom of
this policy, the steady advance made by the Republicans after a mere
handful of them came into the imperial legislature. They grew from five
to thirty, simply because they stood firmly on their own principles,
while the majority were disturbed and uncertain. The principle of the
hereditary constitutional monarchy, he thought, should be plainly
affirmed and presented to the French people, as their only real
safeguard against the incessant disturbance and displacement of the
executive machinery which results from the election of an executive
chief.
'Let this be affirmed and presented,' said M. de la Gorce,' by a
number--no matter how small it may be at first--of sincere and resolute
men, and every successive shock and catastrophe will bring more and more
support to them from all classes in France.'
M. de la Gorce is of the opinion that the laicisation of the schools,
whatever may be said of the motives and intent of those who have
promoted it, has had a good effect on the congreganist schools, by
stimulating the teachers and directors to make greater efforts for the
improvement of their methods and their general machinery of instruction.
This is quite in accord with the views of my friend whom I met at
Boulogne--and indeed it is in the nature of things.
The way in which the laicisation is carried out by the subaltern
authorities seems to be admirably calculated also to inflame the
religious zeal of the people. A very intelligent and liberal
ecclesiastic, living here, tells me that, while M. Ferry is professing
in the Chamber his great anxiety to co-operate with the Conservatives in
modifying the decrees of 1791, in regard to religious associations, and
talking about a more liberal treatment of the clergy and the Christian
free schools, the local functionaries here, in Artois, lose no
opportunity of irritating and annoying the Christian population. In the
village of Moislains near Péronne, for example, he tells me the funeral
took place the other day of the Abbé Sallier, for many years the curé of
that parish; a man so much respected and beloved by the whole community
that, notwithstanding an express request made by him in his will, that
no discourse might be pronounced at his interment, and that it might be
made as simple as possible, the people insisted on escorting the remains
to the cemetery in a long procession headed by the mayor, the municipal
council, and all the notabilities of the country round about. Naturally
the people wished that their children, most of whom had been baptized by
the abbé, might join in this procession; to prevent which an express
order was issued by the school authorities, that the children should not
be allowed to leave the school for that purpose. It is difficult to see
how a petty persecution of this sort can be expected to promote the
'religious peace' about which M. Ferry perorates at Paris. The rural
Artesians, my friend tells me, resent these proceedings very bitterly,
and show their feelings in the most practical fashion, by subscribing
freely to carry on the religious primary schools, and refusing to let
their children attend the lay schools, which are kept up by the
Government out of the taxes paid by themselves. This, with a thrifty and
rather parsimonious population, like that which increases and multiplies
so steadily in Artois, is a most significant fact.
The Marist Brethren, who have their headquarter at the Ecole de Notre
Dame in Albert, a town of some 4,000 inhabitants, about half-way between
Arras and Amiens, are carrying on these religious schools most
successfully. Albert itself is a very curious and interesting place.
There are remains here of Roman fortifications which show that it was a
point of importance under the Empire, and subterranean excavations of a
most remarkable character, one of them extending for more than two
miles. Down to the time of Henry IV. Albert was known as Ancre. Concini,
the Florentine favourite of Mary de' Medici, bought the lordship of
Ancre with the title of marquis. With the help of his clever Florentine
wife, Leonora Galigai, he completely subjugated the queen and her weak
son, Louis XIII.; and, without so much as drawing his sword in battle,
made himself a marshal of France, How all this led him on to his ruin I
need not recite. He was stabbed to death in the precincts of the Louvre
by Vitry; his wife, arraigned as a sorceress, was strangled and burned;
and their unfortunate little son was degraded. The marquisate and
lordship of Ancre were bought, oddly enough, by another and very
different Florentine race, the Alberti, who had come into France and
established themselves in the Venaissin a hundred years before. So
intense was the general hatred of the Concinis, that, upon acquiring
Ancre, the Alberti unbaptized the place and gave it their own French
name of Albert, which is still most honourably borne by their
representatives, the ducal houses of Luynes and of Chaulnes. It is
common enough in France, as it is in England, to find the names of
families perpetuated in conjunction with those of places once their
property--Kingston-Lacy, Stanton-Harcourt, Bagot's Bromley, Melton
Mowbray are English cases in point. But this displacement of an old
territorial designation by a family name is unusual. Some thing like it
has taken place in our own times and in a remote south-western corner of
France, where the people of Arles-les-Bains changed the name of their
pleasant little town of orange groves and olives to Amélie, to
commemorate their respect and affection for the excellent queen of Louis
Philippe.
There are factories at Albert; and a modern church is building there,
not to the unmixed delight of architects and archæologists. But my
concern now is with the work of the Marist Brothers who have made Albert
their headquarters.
This work is carried on with the direct and active co-operation of the
people. At one little hamlet, for example, called, I think, Brébières,
nearly a hundred children now attend the Marist school, whose parents
pay for each child a subscription of three francs a month. There, not
long ago, it was found that in one poor family of peasants a family
council had been called to raise this modest sum in order that one of
the children now of an age to attend the school might be sent to it. The
two elder children settled the question by insisting that they would
give up their own daily ration of milk to meet the expense.
Will France be a nobler and stronger country when the priests who train
the children of her peasantry into this spirit are driven out of the
land?
This is the real question which must be met and answered by the
advocates of compulsory lay education in the public schools.
The next step to be taken in the 'laicisation' of the schools has been
already revealed in the famous 'Article 7' of M. Ferry. M. Ferry is the
true, though more or less occult, head of the present Administration in
France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought
to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that
purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is
the mask of M. Ferry. But the nose will come through before long.'
Many years ago the public conscience of Philadelphia, then as now one of
the most Protestant of American Protestant cities, was scandalised by
the will of a French merchant, Stephen Girard; who, after acquiring a
large fortune in that city, left it to found a college, within the
precincts of which no minister of religion was, on any pretext whatever,
to be allowed to appear. The stupid bigotry of this ignorant millionaire
was the high-water mark of French Republican liberality during the
dismal orgie of the First Republic. It is still the high-water mark of
French Republican liberality under the Third Republic. The dream and
desire of M. Ferry and his friends are to prohibit ministers of religion
from taking any part whatever in the education of the French people.
Already the municipal council of Paris has undertaken to 'bowdlerise'
the literature of the world in order to prevent the minds of the young
from being perverted by coming into contact with the name of God. These
good butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers of the Seine really
believe, like certain more academical persons of higher social
pretensions in England and America, that the ineffable simpletons and
scoundrels who for three or four years during the last decade of the
last century made ducks and drakes at Paris of the public fortune and
the private rights of the French people, were inspired harbingers of a
new era. Outside of France it may be hard to suppose this possible, but
nothing can be more certain than that the educational legislation of
France since 1882 has been aimed steadily and directly at the abolition,
not of Christianity alone, but of all religion.
It is curious to see the common school system of New England, which in
the beginning was the device of a theocracy bent on usurping the
authority of parents over their children, taken up after more than two
hundred years, and readjusted to the purposes of a set of men whom the
Puritans would have unhesitatingly whipped to death at the cart's tail
as blasphemers.
Only the other day, in the Chamber, an ardent Republican member, M.
Pichon, made a speech in which he openly avowed the object of laicising
the schools to be the destruction of religion. 'Between you, the
Catholics,' he exclaimed, 'and us, who are Republicans, there is a great
abyss. The interests of the Church are incompatible with those of the
Republican Government.' That the Republicans in the Assembly should have
applauded this declaration is rather astonishing, since it was in
substance an admission that the interests of the 'Republican Government'
are inconsistent with those of an admittedly immense majority of the
French people. But they did applaud it, and not long before M. Pichon
made the speech a solid Republican vote of 232 members had been recorded
for the suppression of the French Embassy to the Vatican. Is it
surprising that the Catholics of France should be asking themselves all
over the country whether it is possible for them to accept the Republic
without abjuring their religion?
The 'abyss' of which M. Pichon speaks has been dug, not by the Church,
but by the theorists who have expelled the Sisters of Charity from the
hospitals and the chaplains from the prisons of France, who refuse to
the poor the right to pray in the almshouses, and who throw the
crucifix out of school-houses which are maintained by the money of
Catholic taxpayers. As between M. Pichon and M. Ferry and their
fellow-conspirators on one side of this abyss, and the Marist Brethren
and the little children of France on the other side of it, the history
of the world hardly encourages the belief that it is the Marist Brethren
and the little children who will finally be engulfed!
It is a notable proof of the hold which Catholic ideas have upon the
people in this part of France, that notwithstanding a marked tendency to
emigration among the peasantry of the Boulonnais and of Artois, the
population has steadily increased through the excess of births over
deaths. This is not true of France as a whole. On the contrary, while
the deaths in France in 1888 were 837,857, against an annual average of
847,968 from 1884 to 1887, the births diminished from an annual average
of 937,090 between 1881 and 1884 to 882,639 in 1888, leaving the small
excess of 44,772 over the deaths. Of these only 33,458 were of French
parentage! In Artois and the Boulonnais, the population is more dense
than in any other part of France, excepting the metropolitan regions.
While France, as a whole, in 1881, gave an average of seventy
inhabitants to the square kilomètre, which is the precise proportion in
Bavaria--the arrondissement of Béthune in the coal-mining country of
Artois (fed by an exceptional immigration from Belgium) gave 173 to the
square kilomètre, which exceeds the proportion in any division of the
German Empire except Saxony, Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg.
The Department of the Pas-de-Calais, as a whole, gave 117 inhabitants to
the square kilomètre, which is the precise proportion in Saxe-Altenburg,
and exceeds by five the proportion in the British Islands taken as a
whole. In the arrondissement of St.-Omer the rate of increase by natural
growth some years ago outran that of the older sea-board States of the
American Union.
This phenomenon cannot be explained by the improvidence of the
Artesians, for they are admittedly remarkable, even in France, for
their frugality and their forecasting habit of mind. A friend of mine,
who lives near St.-Omer, is probably right when he attributes it to
their strong domestic tastes and habits, and to the influence over them
of their religion. He says they are 'fanatics of the family.' Certainly
in the cottages the children seem to have things all their own way,
almost as much as in America. 'The Artesian parents,' my friend tells
me, 'make their children the objects of their lives.' In the rural
regions there is not much immorality. Concubinage, which is by no means
uncommon in the towns, is exceedingly uncommon in the country of Artois.
The agricultural Artesian wishes to be the recognised head of his house,
hates to have things at loose ends, and habitually makes his wife a
consulting partner in all his affairs. Even when he is not particularly
devout he likes to be on good terms with, his curate, and has very
positive ideas as to what is decent and becoming. 'In short,' said my
friend, 'he is an ideal husbandman in every sense of that English word,
for which we have no equivalent. The assize records show that offences
against public morality are almost wholly confined to the towns in
Artois, and it is a notable fact that these particular offences are much
more frequently committed by persons who can read and write than by the
illiterate.'
My friend seemed to be startled when I told him that this 'notable fact'
appeared to me to be quite in accordance with the nature of things, as
set forth in the sound old maxim cited by the Apostle, that 'evil
communications corrupt good manners.' So long as thirty years ago, the
American Census showed that in the six New England States, in which the
proportion of illiterate native Americans to the native white
population was 1 to 312, the proportion to the native white population
of native white criminals was 1 to 1,084; whereas, in the six southern
States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and the two Carolinas,
the proportion of native white illiterates being 1 to 12 of the native
white population, the proportion of native white criminals to the native
white population was only 1 to 6,670. Mr. Montgomery of California,
Assistant-Attorney-General of the United States in the Administration of
President Cleveland, working on the lines of inquiry suggested by such
facts as these, did not hesitate, two years ago, to assert that 'the
boasted New England public school system, as now by law established
throughout the length and breadth of the American Republic, is a
poisonous fountain fraught with the seeds of human misery and moral
death.' He cites the official statistics given by a New England
professor, Mr. Royce, to prove that 'there is hardly a state or country
in the civilised world, where atrocious and flagrant crimes are so
common as in educated Massachusetts,' and he shows that the alarming and
unquestionable increase of crime in the United States cannot be
attributed, as it too often is, to the 'foreign element in American
society, the criminal rate of which has remained the same or even
lessened, while the native criminals increased during 1860-1870, from
10,143 to 24,173.' During that decade the total population of the United
States increased from 31,443,321 to 38,567,617. Deducting 2,466,752 for
the increase by immigration, we have a general increase of 4,657,538 in
the native American population, or of less than 15 per cent, against an
increase of about 140 per cent. in the number of native white criminals!
It is no part of my present purpose to discuss Mr. Montgomery's
contention. But it seems to me to deserve grave consideration in
connection with the adventure to which the French Republican Government
has committed itself, of suddenly substituting for the religious and
parental system of education in France, a French modification, in the
interest of unbelief, of that American public school system which, as
Mr. Montgomery maintains, rests upon the principle 'that the whole
people must be educated to a certain degree at the public expense,
irrespectively of any social distinctions.'
I have already said that St.-Omer appears to be in its politics
decidedly Republican. An odd illustration of this I found in a hot local
controversy waging there over the setting up of a statue in one of the
public squares, to commemorate the courage and patriotism of a local
heroine, Jacqueline Robins. This statue, which, as a work of art is not
unworthy to be compared with the statue of Jeanne Hachette at Beauvais,
was set up, with much ceremony, in 1884 (I believe the State paid for
it), and stands upon a pedestal, with an inscription setting forth how
Jacqueline Robins, in the year 1710, saved the besieged city of St.-Omer
by going off herself with a train of boats down the Aa to Dunkirk, and
bringing back the provisions and munitions of war necessary for the
defence of the city.
As the city of St.-Omer was certainly not besieged in 1710, this
inscription naturally excited the critical indignation of the local
antiquaries, and on July 27, 1885, an exceedingly clear and conclusive
report on the subject was laid before the Society of Antiquaries of
Morinia, a body which has done good service to the cause of history in
Northern France. From this report it plainly appears that St.-Omer was
not besieged at all in 1710. Prince Eugene, who marched into Artois with
the Duke of Marlborough in that year in pursuit of Villars, wished to
attack St.-Omer after the fall of Douai and Béthune, but the
States-General of Holland would not hear of it; and the gallant defence
made of Aire-sur-la-Lys by the Marquis de Goesbriant kept the allies at
bay so late in the year that no attempt upon St.-Omer could be made. The
local chronicles rejoice over this escape, particularly, because they
say the Duke of Marlborough had vowed special vengeance against the
city, its authorities having refused to oblige him by getting out of the
English Jesuits' College and sending him certain papers which the
Duchess of Hamilton (the wife of the brilliant duke who was killed in
Hyde Park by Lord Mohun and General Macartney) desired him to procure
for her use in a law suit against 'Lord Bromley.'[2] St.-Omer, then, not
having been besieged in 1710, why should a statue be set up in honour of
an Audomaraise dame for delivering it? On this point the Report of the
Society of Antiquaries throws a sufficient and interesting light. It
seems that there really lived in St.-Omer in 1710 a certain dame
Jacqueline Isabelle Robins, obviously a woman of mark and force, since
she carried on a number of thriving industries, and among them the
management, under a contract, of the boats between St.-Omer, Calais, and
Dunkirk. Napoleon would have thought her much superior to Madame de
Staël, for before she was forty years old she had married three
husbands, and surrounded herself with six or seven flourishing olive
branches. She was constantly in the law courts fighting for her rights,
not against private persons only, but against the 'mayor and échevins of
the city of St.-Omer.' Though St.-Omer, as I have said, was not besieged
by the allies, it was constantly occupied by the troops of his Most
Christian Majesty, who gave the magistrates and the people almost as
much trouble as if they had been enemies, and the records show that not
long before the surrender of Aire-sur-la-Lys to the allies in November
1710, the Comte d'Estaing (an ancestor of the Admiral who did such good
service to the American cause), under orders from Versailles succeeded
in bringing to St.-Omer from Dunkirk a complete supply of powder and
other munitions of war. It seems to be likely enough that in this
operation the military authorities availed themselves of the services of
dame Jacqueline and of her boats. As she was a masterful dame, and,
burying her third husband, who was twelve years her junior, in 1720,
lived on to depart at the age of seventy-five in 1732, a local legend
evidently grew up about her personal share in the events of the great
war of 1710. The first official historian of St.-Omer, a worthy priest
Dom Devienne, writing in 1782, gave this legend form. As he transformed
Jacqueline from a rich and prosperous woman of affairs into a 'woman of
the dregs of the people,' calling her Jane, by the way, instead of
Jacqueline, she became, after the Revolution, a popular heroine; her
third husband, who appears to have been a young Squire de Boyaval and a
dashing grey mousquetaire of King Louis, was metamorphosed into a
brewer's apprentice (Jacqueline among her other possessions owned a
brewery); and now, in the year 1889 we have the thrifty dame who helped
the king's officers carry out the king's orders for the supplying of
St.-Omer, immortalised in bronze as an Audomaraise Jeanne Hachette or
Maid of Saragossa!
[2] This is a curious sidelight on English political history. 'Lord
Bromley' was obviously Sir William Bromley, M.P., the bitter enemy
of Marlborough, who earned the undying hatred of the Duchess by
comparing her to Alice Perrers, the mistress of Edward III. In 1705
Harley prevented the election of Bromley as Speaker by re-publishing
an account of the 'Grand Toure' written by him, and foisting into it
notes intended to show that Bromley was a 'Papist.' Bromley was
again a candidate for the same office in 1710, and Marlborough
evidently hoped to get from St.-Omer documentary proof of the
'papistry' of his foe. The second Duchess of Hamilton came, I think,
of a Catholic family, and may have thought she had a clue to these
documents. The intrigue, however, failed, and Bromley was elected
Speaker without opposition in November, 1710.
Is not this worthy to stand on record with Sir Roger de Coverley's tale
of the old coachman who had a monument in Westminster Abbey because he
figured on the box of the coach in which Thomas Thynne of Longleat was
barbarously murdered by Count Konigsmark?
The Republican Mayor of St.-Omer took sides on the question of
Jacqueline Robins in 1885 with the Republican 'Professor of History in
the Lyceum,' both of them being 'officers of the Academy,' against the
Society of Antiquaries; and I dare say the matter may affect the
Parliamentary elections in September, 1889!