[Illustration: A STREET AT ST. ÉMILION.]
The nooks and corners where great men of the past spent their lives quietly
and thoughtfully often lie far enough from the beaten ways to provide the
romantic tramp with a motive that he may need to excuse his singularity
in faring on foot over a tract of country which lacks the kind of
picturesqueness that would mark it out as a territory to be annexed by the
tourist sooner or later. Having found myself, almost unexpectedly, in the
district of Michel de Montaigne, after crossing the Double, I reckoned
that less than a day's quiet walking would bring me to the village of
St. Michel-Bonnefare--better known in the region as St. Michel-Montaigne
(pronounced there Montagne, as the name was originally spelt), close to the
castle or manor-house where the contemplative Périgourdin gentleman was
born, and where he wrote his 'Essays' in a tower, of which he has left a
detailed description. Then there was another lure: the battle-field of
Castillon, a few miles farther south, where the heroic Talbot was slain,
and where the cannon that fired the fatal stone announced the end of the
feudal ages. We may travel over the whole world of literature without going
beyond our house and garden. Even the blind may read, and thus bring back
to themselves the life of the past; but how the indolent mind is helped
when spurred by the eye's impressions! The eye awakens ideas that might
otherwise sleep on for ever, by looking at scenes filled with the living
interest of a Montaigne or a Talbot.
I might have got to within four miles or thereabouts of the Castle of
Montaigne, by using the railroad that runs up the valley of the Lower
Dordogne, but I preferred to start on foot from Montpont. This manner of
travelling is very old-fashioned, but it will always possess a certain
charm for two classes of people: habitual vagabonds who beg and are freely
accused of stealing, and the literary, artistic, antiquarian, or scientific
vagabonds who take to tramping by fits and starts. The latter class, being
quite incomprehensible to the rustic mind in Guyenne, are regarded by it
with almost as much suspicion as the other.
I started at the hour of seven in the morning, which the French--earlier
risers than the English--think a late one for beginning the work of a
summer day in the provinces. I will not say that the plain on which I now
tramped for some miles was uninteresting, because all nature is interesting
if we are only in the right mood to observe and be instructed; but to me
it was dull, for I had been spoilt by much rambling in up and down country
full of strong contrasts. Here I saw on each side of me wide expanses of
field, with scarcely a hedge or tree, all dotted with grazing cattle. Not
a few of the animals were in the charge of muscular, aggressive dogs, that
interpreted their duty too largely, and made themselves a nuisance. At
intervals were patches of maize or pumpkins, or a bit of vineyard with a
house hard by facing the road--a low ground-floor house solidly built,
but its plainness unrelieved by the grace of a vine-trellis or a climbing
flower. By-and-by the land became somewhat hilly, and the pasturage changed
gradually to open wood and heath, where the gorse was already gilding its
summer green, and the bracken stood palm-like in purple deserts of heather.
Then the ideas began to warm in the sunny silence, and I fear that I
rejoiced in the sterility of the soil which had preserved the charm of free
and untormented nature.
When I reached the village-like town of Villefranche, I perceived a
movement of men and women like that of bees around a hive. I chanced to
arrive on the day of the local fair, when everybody expects to make some
money, from the peasant proprietor or the _métayer_ who brings in his corn
or cattle, to the small shopkeeper who lives upon the agriculturist. I felt
disposed to lunch at the grandest hotel in Villefranche, and a good woman
whom I consulted on the subject led me through throngs of bartering
peasants and cattle-dealers, forests of horns, and by the upturned jaws of
braying asses, until she stopped before an inn. There all was bustle and
commotion. A swarm of women had been called in to help in anticipation of
the crush, and they got in one another's way, walked upon the cats' tails,
and raised the tumult of a boxing-booth with the rattle of their tongues.
All this was in the kitchen; but there was a side-room in which a long
table had been laid for the guests. I took a place at this rustic
_table-d'hôte_, and I had on each side of me and in front of me men in
blouses who talked in patois or in French, as the mood suited them. I had
already perceived that, as I drew nearer to Bordeaux, the Southern dialect
became more and more a jargon, in which there were not only many French
words, but French phrases. These men in blouses were rough sons of the
soil, but I soon gathered that some of them were very well off. In
provincial France dress counts for very little as a sign of fortune's
favour. There were men at the table whose burly forms and full-coloured
faces were just what one would expect to see at a market dinner in an
English country town; but their epicurean style of dealing lightly with
each dish, so that the charm of variety might not be spoilt by a too hasty
satisfaction of hunger, and the unanimity with which they asked for coffee
at the close, marked a strong difference in habits and manners. Their
politeness to me was almost excessive. As soon as the most jovial member of
the company--who had undertaken the carving had cut up a piece of meat or
a fowl, the dish was invariably passed from his end of the table to mine,
where I sat alone.
Before leaving Villefranche, a low, square tower enticed me to the parish
church. The building was originally Romanesque, but the pointed style must
have been grafted upon the other so long ago as the English period. Outside
the walls, some steps led me into a little chapel half underground. It was
a barrel-vaulted crypt, sternly simple, and lighted only by one very narrow
Romanesque window in the apse, just above a rough stone altar of ancient
pattern, with a statue of the dead Christ on the ground beneath the slab.
In the semi-darkness, the flame of a solitary candle shone without smoke or
motion, as if it had been there for centuries, and like all the rest had
grown very old.
I had climbed to the ruined Castle of Gurçons, where sloes and blackberries
were waiting for the birds in the feudal court strewn with stones. I had
left the village of Montpeyroux, with the sound of flails weakening on
the wind, and late in the afternoon was drawing near to the Castle of
Montaigne, when a small wayside auberge tempted me from the hot road. The
woman who waited upon me had a fat body and a hard, firmly inquisitive
face--a combination to be distrusted. Having settled down again to her
knitting, she inquired of me where I was going, and when I told her that I
was on my way to the Château de Montaigne, she asked me if I had any work
to do there. I evaded this question, not knowing, or not wishing to know,
exactly what she meant. She reflected a few minutes, then, looking at me
over her knitting-needles, she said:
'Are you a tiler or a plasterer?'
Now, this was a question that I was quite unprepared for. I had often been
set down as a pedlar. I had been suspected of being a travelling musician,
and also a colporteur for the Salvation Army; in fact, of being almost
everything but a tiler or plasterer. But this shrewd woman had evidently
come to the conclusion that, if I did not work upon the housetops, I must
perforce be an artist of the trowel. I assured her that I was as incapable
of fixing a tile as of making a ceiling; whereupon she said:
'I beg your pardon. I thought you were a workman.'
As I left, I saw by the vivacity with which she scratched the back of her
head with a knitting-needle that she was writhing mentally with the torture
of unsatisfied curiosity; and I took a malignant pleasure in her suffering.
The white flannel that I was wearing was the most agreeable reason I could
think of for being associated with plaster, but my resemblance to a tiler
continued to perplex me as I trudged along the road.
I now left the broad highway, and took a narrower road that went for
some distance through woods up the side of a long hill. The shadows were
gathering under the trees, and I was beginning to fear that I should reach
the castle too late to carry out my pilgrimage that night, when I saw above
me, upon a knoll resting upon rocky buttresses, a modern mansion against a
background of trees. This was the very pleasant country residence built by
M. Magne, Minister of Finance under the Second Empire, upon the site of the
castle of Montaigne, which the author of the 'Essays,' with a better sense
of certain distinctions than that which is observed nowadays, preferred to
speak of as his _manoir_. This manor-house still preserved its fifteenth
and sixteenth century character, when a fire breaking out destroyed
everything but the walls, and gave M. Magne a plausible excuse for the
demolition. A part that was spared by the fire, and was therefore suffered
to remain intact, was the almost isolated tower, to which Montaigne
withdrew for the sake of quiet and meditation, and which is so well known
to all readers of his 'Essays.' Had this also disappeared, I should have
had no motive for wandering down the long avenue at nearly the end of the
day.
I met with a courteous reception at the mansion, and obtained immediate
permission to visit the retreat of the sixteenth-century moralist who
looked with such clear eyes upon human life.
[Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU DE MONTAIGNE AFTER THE FIRE.]
The tower and its gateway belong to the period when feudalism had lost its
vitality, and life was troubled by the vague perception of new motives and
principles. Montaigne tells us that his family had occupied the manor
a hundred years when he entered into possession, and the style of the
fragment that is left bears out this statement: it appears to belong to the
middle part of the fifteenth century. Already manorial houses, crenated and
often moated, but, like this one at Montaigne, defensive rather for show
than the reality, were scattered over France. Speaking generally, they
belonged to the small nobility who fell under the category of the
_arrière-ban_ in time of war. In this tower Montaigne had his chapel, his
bedroom--to which he retired when the yearning for solitude was strong--and
his library. The chapel is on the ground-floor, and is very much what
it was in Montaigne's time. It is small, but there was room enough to
accommodate his household, which was never a large one. Its little
cupola connects it with the local style of architecture, to which the
high-swelling name of Byzantino-Périgourdin has been given. A small stone
altar occupies the apsidal end, and here, as in two or three other places,
the arms of Montaigne will be noted with interest by those who have read in
the essays: '_Je porte d'azur semé de trèfles d'or, à une patte de lyon de
mesme armée de gueules, mise en face_.'
A man is often a sceptic on the surface and a believer underneath. Pascal
has called Montaigne '_un pur pyrrhonien_'; but Pascal himself has been
accused of scepticism. Living in an age when the crimes daily committed in
the name of religion might so easily have inspired a hater of violence like
Montaigne with a horror of creeds, he was no philosopher of the God-denying
sort. Moreover, notwithstanding his doubting moods and his fondness of the
words '_Que sais-je?_' he upheld the practice of religion in his own home,
and died a Christian.
He shared, however, the eccentricity of Louis XI. in keeping himself out
of sight when he attended the religious services in his chapel. In the
vaulting near the entrance is a small opening communicating with a narrow
passage, by means of which Montaigne could leave his bedroom and hear mass
without showing himself; but in order to do so he had to grope along his
rabbit's burrow almost on hands and knees. To reach his bedroom from the
ground, he climbed up the spiral staircase as the visitor does today. The
steps are much worn in places, and the boots of the essayist must have had
something to do with this, for he probably used the tower more than any
other man. The room, nearly circular in shape, with brick floor and small
windows, looks to modern eyes more like a prison than a bed-chamber
befitting a nobleman. But independently of the great difference in
the ideas of home comfort which prevailed in the upper ranks of
sixteenth-century society, compared to those of the same class to-day,
Montaigne, like all men with large minds, loved simplicity. His father, who
rode the hobby-horse of frugal and severe training to an extent that might
have proved disastrous to his son Michel, had not the boy been singularly
well endowed by nature to correspond to his parent's wishes, had nurtured
him in the scorn of luxury by methods which would be considered very
crotchety nowadays. But this could not have been 'my chamber' in which King
Henry of Navarre slept, in 1584, when he paid a visit to Montaigne at his
fortified house. There was a better one in that part of the building which
has disappeared. Montaigne tells, with his quaint humour, that he was in
the habit of retiring to his bedroom in the tower so that he might rule
there undisturbed, and have a corner apart from what he curiously terms the
'conjugal, filial, and civil community.' And he expresses pity for the man
who is not able to 'hide himself' in the same way when the humour leads him
to do so.
It was in the room above, however, where he enjoyed to the full the
pleasures of contemplation and quietude. Here, he tells us, he had
installed his library, in what had previously been regarded as the most
useless part of his mansion. The position had certain advantages. 'I
can see beneath me my garden and my poultry-yard, and can look into the
principal parts of my house.' It appears from this that he was so much 'in
the clouds,' that he did not occasionally find satisfaction from peeping
through windows to see what others were doing. It is in this way that the
old writers reveal themselves, and they keep themselves in sympathy with
mankind by not affecting to be above the little weaknesses common to
humanity. Here Montaigne spent the greater part of his time, except in
winter, when he often found the library too draughty to be comfortable. It
was in this room that he wrote his essays, and chiefly thought them out
while pacing up and down the floor, which even then was so uneven that the
only flat bit was where he had placed his table and chair. In common with
some other celebrated writers, he found that his thoughts went to sleep
when he sat down. 'My. mind does not work unless the legs make it move.
Those who study without a book are all in the same state.'
Montaigne was no despiser of books; on the contrary, he was a great reader,
and one of the most scholarly men of his age; but he had his fits of
reading like other people, and the intervals between them were sometimes
long. Without a doubt, these intervals were the most productive periods.
The educational system to which he was subjected as a child was enough to
disgust him with books, and to separate him for ever from them as soon as
he had obtained his freedom. He was crammed with Latin, as a goose that
has to be fattened is crammed with maize in his own Périgord. He was not
allowed to speak even to his mother in French or in Périgourdin. Such was
the will of his father, who must have been a rather difficult man to live
with, and one whom a woman of spirit in this century would kill or cure
with curtain lectures if his interference with her in the nursery should
outrage the instincts of maternity. The very small boy was handed over to
tutors, whose instructions were to make Latin his first language, and even
his mother and servants were compelled to pick up enough Latin words to
carry on some sort of conversation with him.
In the printers' preface to one of the earliest editions of the 'Essays,'
it is said: '_Somme, ils se_ _latinisèrent tant qu'il en regorgea jusque
à leurs villages tout autour, où ont pris pied par usage plusieurs
appellations latines d'artisans et d'outils.'_ It is just possible that
some of these Latin terms may have lingered in the district to the present
day; but it would need a great deal of patience to find them, and to
distinguish them from the patois of the people. Montaigne was more than six
years old before he was allowed to say a word in French or in the dialect
of Périgord--that of Arnaud and Bertrand de Born. He finished his austere
education at the then celebrated College of Guyenne, at Bordeaux, where,
according to local authorities, he had among his teachers the Scotch poet,
George Buchanan.
'When young,' writes Montaigne, 'I studied for show; afterwards to grow
wiser; now I study for diversion.' He liked to have his books around him
even when he did not read them. Numerous reading-desks were distributed
over the brick floor of this circular room, and upon them he placed his
favourite volumes. He therefore read standing, according to the very
general custom of his time, which was doubtless better than our own, of
making our backs crooked by sitting and bending over our books. According
to his own admission, he had a bad memory, therefore he must have been in
frequent need of referring to his tomes for the quotations from ancient
authors which he was so fond of bringing into his text, and which make a
writer at this end of the nineteenth century smile at the thought of how
all the quills would rise upon that fretful and pampered porcupine, the
reading public of to-day, if Latin and Greek were ladled out to it after
Montaigne's fashion.
The room is bare, with the exception of the wreck of an armchair of
uncertain history; but upon the forty-seven beams crossing the ceiling are
fifty-four inscriptions in Latin and Greek, written, or rather painted,
with a brush by Montaigne. Their interest has suffered a little from the
restoration which some of them have undergone; but there they are, the
crystals of thought picked up by the hermit of the tower in his wanderings
along the highways and byways of ancient literature, and which he fastened,
as it were, to the beams over his head, just where the peasants to-day hang
their dry sausages, their bacon, and strings of garlic. Many persons copy
sentences out of their favourite books, with the intention of tasting their
savour again and again; but if they do not lose them, they are generally
too busy or too indolent afterwards to look for them. Montaigne, however,
had his favourite texts always before his eyes.
The curious visitor intent upon a discovery will be sure to find in these
the philosophical scaffolding of the 'Essays;' but I, who examine such
things somewhat superficially, would rather believe that Montaigne
inscribed them upon the rough wood because they expressed in a few words
much that he had already thought or felt. By the extracts that a man makes
for his private satisfaction from the authors who please him, the bent of
his intellect and cast of character can be very accurately judged. If
other testimony were wanting, these sentences would prove the gravely
philosophical temper of Montaigne's mind, notwithstanding the flippant
confessions of frailty which he mingles sometimes so incongruously with
the reflections of a sage. Most of the extracts are from Latin and
Greek authors, but not a few are from the Books of Ecclesiastes and
Ecclesiasticus and the Epistles of St. Paul. Here one sees written by the
hand of the sixteenth century thinker the noble words of Terence:
'Homo sum, humani a me nihil alienum puto.'
Then one catches sight of this line by the sagacious Horace:
'Quid aeternis minorem consiliis animum fatigas?'
Looking at another piece of timber, one slowly spells out the words:
'O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!'
And so one follows the track of Montaigne's mind from rafter to rafter.
Had I been left alone here while the evening shadows gathered in the tower,
I might soon have seen the figure of a man in trunk-hose, doublet, and
ruff, with pointed beard and pensive eyes, moving noiselessly between rows
of spectral desks covered by spectral books; but, as it was, even in the
most shadowy corner I could not detect the faintest outline of a ghost.
Nobody knows what has become of all the volumes which were here, and which
were said to have numbered a thousand. They were given by Montaigne's only
surviving child, his daughter Léonore, to the Abbé de Roquefort, but what
became of them afterwards is a mystery. There is a small room adjoining the
library, the one that Montaigne mentions as having a fireplace. The hearth
where he sat and warmed himself has scarcely changed. Here on the walls
may be seen traces of paintings. They are supposed to be the work of a
travelling artist, to whom Montaigne gave food and shelter in exchange
for his labour. It would appear from this that he was careful not to ruin
himself by the encouragement of art. Montaigne, however, had a good nature,
although he may not have cared to spend money on bad pictures. He has told
us of his efforts to reclaim little beggars, and to make them respectable
members of society. Before the present château was built, the old kitchen
could be seen where he warmed and fed the young mendicants, who, having
been refreshed and comforted, returned to their old ways, '_les gueux ayant
leurs magnificences et leurs voluptés comme les riches_.'
The village of St. Michel is close to the château, but is of much more
ancient origin, as its church plainly shows. The venerable Romanesque
door-way was to me more beautiful because of the purple spots of
snapdragon, that shone in the clear dimness of the twilight like little
coloured lamps about the crevices of the old stones. It is uncertain
whether Montaigne was christened here or in the family chapel. It was a
strange christening wherever it took place, for we are told that he was
'held over the font' by persons of most humble condition, his father's
motive in this matter being, according to the printers of the early edition
of the 'Essays' already referred to, 'to attach him to those who might
have need of him rather than to those of whom he might have need.' It was
Papessu, another village in the neighbourhood, to which he was sent as
a nurseling, and where, in obedience to the injunctions of his Spartan
father, he was treated like one of the peasant family with whom he was
placed. He was reared from his cradle in frugality and philosophy, and,
considering what an unpleasant childhood he must have passed, it is truly
wonderful that he fulfilled parental expectations, and did not turn out a
hard drinker and a brawling cavalier.
There is a tradition in Périgord which some local writers have accepted as
fact, that the Montaigne family was of English origin. It is not easy to
ascertain the ground on which it rests. The patronymic was Eyquem, and the
_chevalier-seigneur_, who settled in Périgord and took the territorial
title of Montagne or Montaigne, came from the Bordelais.
That is about all that is really known of the family. If the Eyquem had
borne a prominent part against the French kings in the long wars which had
not ended a hundred years before the birth of the moralist, this would have
been sufficient to account for their being described as English.
Speaking of the peasants of his district, Montaigne tells us that their
dress was 'more distant from ours than that of a man who is only clothed
with his skin.' From this we have a right to suppose that their appearance
was original, if not picturesque. To-day it is neither one nor the other.
With the exception of the kerchief tied round the back of the head, after
the fashion of the Périgourdine or the Bordelaise, by some of the women,
these peasants wear nothing to distinguish them from those who have
entirely abandoned a local costume.
I was in no way pleased with the villagers of St. Michel-Montaigne, nor did
they seem to be agreeably impressed by me. Those to whom I spoke did not
conceal their surprise that I had been allowed to see over the castle. I
think they must have set me down for something less respectable than a
plasterer, and I began to think quite seriously that I was neglecting my
appearance. Then I thought of the knapsack, which was really getting to
look, from long usage, as if the time had come for placing it in the way of
a deserving _chiffonnier_, but I could not make up my mind to buy another.
I was anxious to pass the night in the village, for I hoped that the
inhabitants had preserved some traditions of Montaigne; but there was only
a small and very dirty-looking auberge that had any pretension to lodge
man and beast, and here the hostess rejected my overtures with vivacity.
Consequently, I was compelled to trudge on, and as I left the place I shook
the dust from off my feet at the inhabitants. There was plenty of it, but I
am afraid it did them little harm.
The road, now descending towards the Dordogne, passed through great
vineyards, and there was enough light for the clustered bunches of grapes
to be seen on every vine. Under the calm sky, still full of the heat of the
summer day, and glowing duskily, the wide, sloping land offered up all its
myriads of broad, motionless leaves and its wealth of fruit to the god of
wine. O gentle peace of the summer night that has still the bloom of the
sun upon its dusky cheek--peace untroubled by any sound save the joyous
shrilling of the cricket that has climbed upon the darkening leaf--why do I
hurry onward upon the dusty road, instead of sitting upon a bank amid the
fragrant thyme and agrimony, and letting the mind lay in great store of
your sweetness against the cold and dismal nights to come?
I reached the village of La Mothe by the Dordogne, and while I was casting
about for an inn that looked comfortable, and also hospitable, I met
a pretty little brunette with a rich southern colour in her cheeks,
charmingly coifed _à la bordelaise_, and tripping jauntily along with a
coffee-pot in her hand. It was pleasant to look at a nice face again after
all the ill-favoured visages that had risen up against me during the second
half of the day, and so I stopped this pretty girl and asked her to tell me
which was the best hotel in the place. She would not answer the question,
but she mentioned a hotel which she said was as good as any. Thither I
went, and found a comfortable little inn, where I was well received. I had
not been there long when the little brunette entered. She was the 'daughter
of the house.' I now understood that her hesitation was conscientious.
The hostess was a small, sprightly woman with a smiling face, which,
together with her bright-coloured coif gracefully hanging to her black
hair, made up such a head as puts one in a good temper for a whole evening.
She was so highly civilized that she actually asked me if I would like to
wash my hands. I expected that she was going to lead me to one of those
little cisterns--'fountains' in French--attached to the wall, that one sees
throughout Guyenne, and which have come down almost unchanged in form, as
well as the roller-towels that often go with them, from the feudal castles
of the twelfth century; but I was wrong. She led me to a bucket. Filling
a large ladle with water, she fixed it lengthwise, and the handle being a
tube, the water ran slowly out from the end. I quite understood that I had
to wash my hands with the trickling water, for I had often done it before.
These ladles with hollow handles are also used for sprinkling the floors,
which are never washed in Southern France. The sprinkling lays the dust,
cools the air, and depresses the fleas for at least a quarter of an hour.
After I had dealt with a well-cooked little dinner, plentifully bedewed
with a pleasant but not insidious wine grown upon the sunny slopes above
the Dordogne, I made the discovery that the best room in the house was
occupied by the dark-eyed damsel, except when a guest came along who
managed to ingratiate himself with her mother, and then the daughter had
to turn out. The room was not exactly luxurious, for it contained little
besides the bed, a table, and a chair, but it was bright and clean; and
when I had confided myself to the strong hempen sheets that had still half
a century of wear in them, and had passed the first quarter of an
hour, which is always critical, without being made aware by scouts and
skirmishers of the advance of a hostile force, I was very thankful that I
was not received with open arms in the village of St. Michel-Montaigne.
The next morning I met the Dordogne again after a long separation. It was
now a great river flowing quietly through a vine-covered plain. The rapids
had all been left far away, but it had begun to feel the tide, and this
to a river is like the first shock of death. It struggles for awhile with
destiny, and a sadder sound than the cry which it made when it came forth
from the rock or the little lake is heard in the quiet evening or the more
solemn night. Although it is flowing back to its true source, the river
shrinks from the vast and mysterious ocean as we shrink ourselves from the
immense unknown.
But at this hour of eight in the morning, with a sun so bright and a sky so
blue, only the broad and serene beauty of the water makes itself felt. As
the river goes curving over the vine-covered land, its stillness is almost
that of a lake, and it mirrors nothing but the sky, save the trees and
flowers of it's banks. The moments are precious, for the tender loveliness
of the landscape will wane as the light gains strength.
On each side of the Dordogne, between the water and the vineyards, which
stretch away with scarcely a break across the plain and up the sides of the
distant hills, is a strip of rough field. The sunshine of four months, with
hardly a shower to moisten the earth, has made flowers scarce, but on this
long curving bend of coarse meadow the grass has kept something of its
greenness, and the season of blossoming stays by the beautiful stream.
There is a wanton tangling and mingling of the waste-loving flowers, such
as the yellow toad-flax, the bristling viper's bugloss, the thorny ononis
that spreads a hue of pink as it creeps along the ground, sky-blue chicory
on wiry stems, large milk-white blooms of _datura_, and purple heads of
_centaurea calcitrapa_, whose spines are avoided like those of a hedgehog
by people who walk with bare feet. Upon the banks, the high hemp-agrimony
and purple loosestrife, with here and there an evening primrose, flaunt
their masses of colour over the water or the pebbly shore.
From a distant church tower that rises above the wilderness of vines
a clear-voiced bell calls through the morning air, _Sanctus! sanctus!
sanctus!_ by which all know who care to think of it that the priest
standing at the altar there has come to the most solemn part of his mass.
Wandering on, indifferent to the flight of time, upon these pleasant banks,
which, but for a bullock-cart that came jolting and creaking along by
the edge of the vines, I might have thought quite abandoned by all other
humanity, I saw afar off a little cluster of white houses that seemed to
be floating on the blue water. I knew that this could be nothing else but
Castillon, and that the effect of floating houses was an illusion caused by
a bend of the river. And so I was nearing at length that place where the
destinies of France and England, so long interwoven, became again distinct,
and where the English nationality, which five-and-twenty years before was
in imminent danger of absorption as the fruit of victory, was decisively
saved from this fate by a defeat for which all England then in her
blindness mourned. The loss of Guyenne made an alien dynasty national,
and by stopping the outflow of the Anglo-Saxon race upon the Continent,
preserved its energies for the fulfilment of a very different destiny from
that which had almost begun when a peasant-girl dropped her distaff and
took up the sword.
On reaching Castillon I had one of those disappointments to which a
traveller should always be prepared after being taught so often by
experience that distance idealizes a scene. How much less romantic the town
looked now than when I saw it floating, as it seemed, upon the sky-blue
water in a haze of gold-dust fired by the slanting rays! It was then like
the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little
sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its
ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no
ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice. Its site, however, is the
same as that which it occupied in the Middle Ages, namely, close to the
Dordogne, upon a ridge of rising land running up towards the hills which
close the valley on the north. On the eastern side this ridge for some
distance is so steep as to be almost escarped, but it is covered with grass
or vines; on the opposite side it is now only a little above the plain. The
battle was fought, not under the walls of the town, but somewhat to the
north-east of it in the open country.
Talbot's mistake lay in the confidence with which he attacked an entrenched
army much stronger than his own, and especially in his contempt for Messire
Jean Bureau's guns. The old leader now belonged to a dying epoch, and
his great faith in British and Gascon archers may well have led him to
undervalue the power of artillery, notwithstanding that it was used with
terrible effect by Edward III. at Crecy more than a hundred years before.
The French had profited by that lesson, and at Castillon they turned the
tables on their tenacious adversaries.
It may be well to briefly recall the circumstances under which this
momentous battle was fought. One after another the English had been
compelled to surrender to the victorious armies of Charles VII. their
fortresses in Poitou, Angoumois, Guyenne and Gascony; so that of their
immense province of Aquitaine, which at one time stretched from the Loire
to the Pyrenees, they possessed nothing. Even Bordeaux, after remaining
faithful to England for 200 years, was a French city at the middle of the
fifteenth century. It would probably have remained so without any fresh
appeal to arms if Charles VII. had treated the inhabitants with the same
justice, and accorded them the same liberties which they enjoyed while they
were the subjects of the English kings. It is a truly remarkable fact that,
although these kings were so intimately connected with France by blood and
ambition, they had borrowed enough of the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race
for establishing foreign possessions upon the solid basis of reciprocal
interest to make their administrative policy in Aquitaine incomparably
better by its equity, the facilities which it afforded for local
government, the assertion of individual rights, and the growth of communal
prosperity, than that of the French kings and the great nobles who, while
owing homage, to the crown, were virtually sovereigns.
At no time was there much dissatisfaction with the rule of the English
sovereigns and their seneschals in Western Aquitaine. It was only in the
wilder parts of the country, such as the Quercy and the Rouergue, where
Celtic blood was, and still is, almost pure, and where the people were very
difficult to govern--Caesar had found that out before Henry Plantagenet,
Becket, and John Chandos--that there were frequent revolts, entailing as a
fatal consequence in those feudal ages barbaric repression. Throughout the
flourishing Bordelais the people became firmly and thoroughly attached
to the English cause, not less than the Alsatians and Lorrainers became
attached to that of France in later times--although there is no historical
parallel between the origin of the two connections. Bordeaux was like
another London when the Black Prince held his splendid but profligate court
there. Commercial interest had doubtless something to do with this fidelity
of the Bordelais, for the wealthy English soon learnt to appreciate the
delicate flavour of the wines grown upon the chalky hillsides by the
Garonne and the Dordogne, and 500 years ago ships came from London and
Bristol to Bordeaux and returned laden with pipes and hogsheads; but a
sagacious and--the times being considered--a large-minded and generous
system of government gave to the people that feeling of security which
was then so rare, and which was the beginning of all patriotic sentiment.
French writers who have studied this subject frankly admit that we have
here the true explanation of the strong attachment of the Bordelais and the
Gascons to the English cause. As an illustration, it may not be amiss to
translate the following passages from 'Les Anglais en Guyenne,' by M. D.
Brissaud:
'The Aquitanians had reason to thank the English Government for not having
treated them as foreigners, like the inhabitants of a conquered province,
as the people of Ireland, for example, had been treated, and for having
confined its action to the development of judicial institutions, of which
the germ was found in the feudal system of France.... The kings of England
not only refrained from setting themselves in opposition to the local
justice of the _arrière-fiefs_; we have seen them, and we shall see them
again in the history of the communal movement, favour the extension of
trial by peers, while accommodating at the same time their administrative
system to the spontaneous manifestations of opinion in a continental
country. They even took care in the composition of the courts that the
Aquitanians should not feel the supremacy of the foreigner. With rare
exceptions, the _personnel_ of the courts of justice was recruited from
among the inhabitants of the province--a precious advantage at a time when
the predominance of provincial feeling caused those magistrates who were
sent from the North of France into the South by the Capetian royalty to
be regarded as foreigners and enemies. The consequence of this choice by
England of Aquitanians in preference to English in the composition of the
courts was that under Philippe le Bel or Philippe de Valois Guyenne had
a right to consider itself in possession of a milder and more impartial
system of justice than other provinces of the South already attached like
Languedoc to the crown of France.'
When, therefore, the Bordelais fell under French rule, the exactions of
Charles and the cynicism with which he broke faith, together with the
stagnation in the wine trade, caused the people to wish very heartily that
the English would return and try their luck again with the sword. A revolt
was secretly planned, in which many of the powerful barons of Aquitaine
leagued themselves with the burghers of Bordeaux, for the nobles were as
dissatisfied with the new state of things as the commoners. The Earl of
Shrewsbury, notwithstanding his great age, came over from England with a
very small following, and placed himself at the head of the insurrection.
The name of Talbot was sufficient to fire the Bordelais and the Gascons
with enthusiasm and confidence. As the news of his landing in the Médoc
spread, men rushed to arms and raised the old battle-cries of the English
in Aquitaine. Bordeaux opened its gates immediately to the veteran leader,
and the example was quickly followed by Libourne, Castillon, St. Émilion,
and other strong places in the district. This was in the month of October,
1452. It was not until May of the following year that Charles VII. decided
to risk the fortunes of war with the two armies which he had mustered--one
on the Garonne, and the other on the Charente. By that time the whole of
Western Guyenne was again English. The plan of campaign followed was
the one laid out by the long-headed Jean Bureau, a man of figures and
calculations--a small Moltke of the fifteenth century. He had been the
King's treasurer, his _argentier_; then the Bastard of Orleans made him
Mayor of Bordeaux, and now, because he had a taste for guns, he was Grand
Master of the Artillery. He advised Charles that the best course to adopt
in order to spoil the English scheme would be to take possession of
the roads leading to Bordeaux, and thus cut off communication with the
interior. Now, Castillon was an important strategical point, commanding
one of the principal gates of the Bordelais, and it was resolved to make a
vigorous effort to snatch this fortress, which was but weakly garrisoned,
from the hands of the English. The army, which was under the nominal
command of the Comte de Penthièvre, but whose ruling spirit was Jean
Bureau, accordingly marched on Castillon, and the King's army moved in
the same direction. Talbot, having tidings of the enemy's plans, hurried
eastward with all the forces he could muster to the relief of the garrison.
His main object, however, was probably to prevent a junction of the two
armies. He was confident of being able to defeat both if he could engage
them separately.
The French army came down the valley of the Dordogne, and drew near to
Castillon when Talbot was still far away. The plan of the leaders was not
to attack the town until their camp had been well fortified with earthworks
and palisades, for it was felt that they could not be too cautious when an
adversary like Talbot was in the country, and possibly near at hand. The
entrenched camp was laid out and ordered with a military science in
advance of the age. The position, moreover, was very judiciously chosen,
considering the impossibility in which the French were placed of selecting
high ground. The camp was in a fork formed by the Dordogne and its small
tributary, the Lidoire, which flows in a south-westerly direction, and
falls into the broad river a mile or two above Castillon. Bureau was given
ample time to raise his ramparts, dig his moats, fix his palisades, and
set up his park of artillery, on which he laid so much store. Then were
detached 800 archers--Angévins and Berrichons--who took up their quarters
at an abbey that then existed a little to the north of the town, at the
foot of a wooded hill. The fortress was therefore threatened on two sides.
On July 16 Talbot arrived on the scene, and at the first brush obtained a
signal advantage by taking the French completely by surprise. On the march
from Libourne he did not trust himself to the broad valley, which, being
highly cultivated then as it is now, offered no cover, but followed the
line of hills to the north of it, on which much of the ancient forest still
clung. Thus he managed to conceal his advance until his men broke suddenly
upon the unsuspecting archers of Anjou and Berry, and slaughtered them with
that thoroughness which was characteristic of mediaeval warfare. Talbot
belonged to an age that gave no quarter and expected none. A man down was a
man lost, unless he had extraordinary luck. The massacre of these archers
put the English army--which, after the drafts made on various garrisons,
was now said to be about 6,000 strong--in good spirits. Not many of the
fugitives reached the camp. Talbot did not follow up this advantage by
attempting an immediate attack upon the fortified position in the plain. He
gave his men a rest after their toilsome march over rough ground, and
put off the decisive battle until the morrow. In the meantime, he placed
himself in communication with the garrison of Castillon, and arranged that
a sortie in force should take place on the signal being given for the great
tug-of-war. He made the abbey his headquarters, and it has been recorded
that the casks of wine found in the cellars of the dispossessed monks were
speedily drained.
The momentous day of July 17 broke, and Talbot was waiting to hear mass
before risking upon the die of a battle the English cause in Aquitaine, so
wonderfully and bloodlessly redeemed in a few months. One of the last of
the mediaeval knights, the ardour of his loyalty was tinged with mysticism,
and any cause that he had espoused would have become holy in his eyes. He
therefore raised those aged eyes now to the God of battles as he knelt in
the quiet sanctuary, impatient though he was to see the vineyards and the
meadows redden again with the blood that he had been shedding with the zeal
of a Crusader for more than half a century. His chaplain was laying
the altar, when a sudden movement of armed men disturbed the kneeling
octogenarian from his devotions. Tidings were brought that the French camp
was breaking up in disorder, and that the enemy was about to escape. At
this news the blood of the old warrior began to rush through his veins, and
without waiting for the mass, he had his armour brought to him. Clad in
iron and mounted upon his white horse, accompanied by his son, the Lord
Lisle--Shakespeare's John Talbot--he rode down into the plain. The enemy
was not in disorder, but was waiting behind the entrenchments for the
expected onslaught.
Talbot gave the order for the attack, and his thousand knights and esquires
charged down upon the camp. When they were well within range of Bureau's
artillery, the 'three hundred cast-iron pieces mounted on wheels, which
they called _bombardes_,' [Footnote: Chroniques de Jean Tarde.] broke into
a roar, and the stone balls worked terrible havoc upon horses and riders.
The ground was quickly strewn with heavily armoured men, who lay there as
helpless as turned turtles, and who were ridden over by those in the rear.
The mediaeval cavalry was shattered or thrown into hopeless confusion by
the new artillery. The infantry met with no better success in moving to the
assault of the hastily raised ramparts bristling with guns. The English
army was demoralized by this unexpected reception. In vain did Talbot ride
again and again into the thickest of the fray--the besieged had now assumed
the offensive. Even his grand old figure and his rallying cry failed to
turn back the tide of disaster. It has been written that in his wrath he
struck those of his own party who endeavoured to draw him out of the danger
to which he was constantly exposing himself. He felt that at his age it was
not worth while to survive defeat, in order that he might die in his bed
with a mind tortured by gnawing regret a few months or years later.
But although he resolved not to save himself, he urged his son to flee.
On this point there is too much agreement between English and French
chroniclers for it to be possible to doubt that Shakespeare's well-known
scene between the old and the young Talbot, in the first part of 'King
Henry VI.,' was founded on fact. Moreover, what was more natural than that
the father, when he saw the evil turn that things were taking, should have
said to his son:
'Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse,
And I'll direct thee how thou shall escape
By sudden flight. Come, dally not; be gone'?
What more natural, too, than that the son of such a father should have
replied in words which, although less rhythmical, would have been in
substance these?--
'Is my name Talbot? and am I your son?
And shall I fly?
The world will say he is not Talbot's blood,
That basely fled when noble Talbot stood.'
To the fact that the battle of Castillon was fought in Périgord, although
the town is in the Bordelais, we doubtless owe the interesting description
that Jean Tarde has left us of the memorable struggle. His narrative, so
far as it relates to the incident between Talbot and his son, is in the
main the same as Shakespeare's; but being told in the plain prose of a
simple annalist, it lacks the rhetorical and romantic embellishments which
the British poet thought fit to add. In the following translation of the
most interesting part of Tarde's description of the battle, an effort has
been made to preserve the style of the writer:
'The English troops entered courageously by the passage where the artillery
awaited them, which (passage) alone could give them access to the French
army. He who commanded the artillery took his time, and at the first
discharge laid low three or four hundred. This massacre, coming
unexpectedly, troubled the whole English army, and threw it into disorder,
which pained Talbot to see; and fearing the defeat of his men, he told
the Sieur de l'Isle, his son, to withdraw and reserve himself for a more
fortunate occasion; who replied that he could not retire from the combat
in which he saw his father running the risk of his life. To this Talbot
rejoined, 'I have in my life given so many proofs of my valour and military
virtue, that I cannot die to-day without honour, and I cannot flee without
making a breach in the reputation I have acquired by so much labour; but to
you, my son, who are bearing here your first arms, flight cannot bring any
infamy nor death much glory.' [Footnote: 'J'ay pendant ma vie donné tant de
tesmoignages de ma valeur et vertu militaire que je ne puys meshuy mourir
sans honneur et ne puys fuir sans fère brèche à la réputation que j'ay
acquise par tant de travaux; mais vous mon filz qui portés icy vos
premières armes, la fuitte ne vous peut apporter aucune infamie, ny la mort
beaucoup de gloire.'] But without giving heed to this counsel, the young
lord, full of generous courage, reassured his men, made them fall again
into rank, and having ranged them with their bucklers fixed in tortoise
fashion, sped on to the attack of his enemies in their camp; for they had
not dared to leave their trenches. The French, seeing themselves pressed in
this way, entered into the battle. Great was the _mêlée_. The artillery of
the French continued all the while to fire upon the English troops, and so
well that a stone striking Talbot broke his thigh. The English seeing their
chief on the ground, believing him dead, and recognising that the French
were the stronger in artillery and in the number of men, lost courage, fell
into disorder, and only thought of saving themselves. The French, on the
contrary, took heart and fought with fury. The battle was bloody. Talbot,
his son the Sieur de l'Isle, another bastard son, and a son-in-law, were
killed with the greater part of the English nobility, and the whole army
was cut to pieces. Talbot's body was buried on the spot where it was found,
and upon his grave was built a small chapel that still exists, but open to
the sky and half ruined.'
Jean Tarde concludes his narrative of the battle with these remarks:
'The English army being thus defeated, Castillon surrendered, and the King
in person besieged Bordeaux, which surrendered on October 18. Following its
example, all the other towns of Guyenne again submitted to him. Thus ended
the domination of the English in Guyenne, of which (province) they were
completely dispossessed, and which at once returned to the sceptre and
crown of France, after remaining for three hundred years in the claws of
the English leopards.'
There are some patent inaccuracies in Tarde's account--the statement, to
wit, that Talbot was buried on the spot where he fell, whereas his body was
carried from the field and taken to England. The ecclesiastical chronicler
must have accepted the story in circulation among the common people, which
is repeated to this day by the peasants around Castillon, who even point
out a mound which they call 'Talbot's grave.' Shakespeare does not fall
into this error, although he brings Jeanne d'Arc upon the battlefield,
notwithstanding that she was burnt twenty-two years before the death of
Talbot.
According to the version accepted by French historians, Talbot was
overthrown by a cannon-shot, and was afterwards despatched on the ground by
a soldier who ran his sword through the hero's throat. His body was carried
into the French camp, where it remained all night, and it was so disfigured
that his herald could hardly recognise it. Many of the fugitives were
drowned or were killed by the archers while attempting to swim across the
Dordogne. Four thousand English, or English partisans, were said to have
been slain on this fatal day, and only a small remnant of the army managed
to retreat within the walls of Castillon. The French then besieged the
town, and the bombardment was so furious that the garrison was soon willing
to surrender on the best terms that could be obtained. Bordeaux was not
besieged until St. Émilion, Libourne, Fronsac, Bazas, Cadillac, and other
strongholds of the Bordelais had capitulated.
After this rather long journey into the past, I must return to my wayfaring
upon the battlefield of Castillon, over which more than four centuries have
crept since the events occurred which gave it so dramatic a celebrity.
Scorched by the now blazing sun, I took the shadeless road leading out of
the town towards the north-east, and after walking about a mile between
vineyards, I came to the commemorative monument of the battle raised in
1888 by the Union Patriotique de France. It is a low obelisk, with no
ornament save a mediaeval sword carved upon it, with point turned upwards.
Facing the road is the following inscription:
'_Dans cette plaine le 17 Juillet, 1453, fut remporté
la victoire qui délivra du joug de l'Angleterre
les provinces meridionals de la France et termina la
guerre de cent ans_.'
The abbey where the French archers were surprised and slain must have been
near this spot, but it was down in the valley by the Lidoire where Talbot
fell. There is no trace of a chapel such as that of which Tarde speaks, nor
any other mark to show the place. But the little stream is there as of old,
and the beautiful Dordogne that drank the mingled blood of the two armies
which its tributary poured into it flows serenely and blue as it did then
under the same summer sky.
An Englishman who now wanders over the battlefield of Castillon can hardly
realize how his country grieved at the defeat of Talbot far away here
amidst the southern vines. To-day it seems so absurd, so contrary to the
policy of common-sense, that England, then so thinly populated, should have
striven so hard and so long in order to be a Continental power; when now,
with her dense population, half subsisting upon foreign supplies, she
blesses that accident of nature which caused the bridge of rocks that
connected her with the mainland to disappear beneath the sea. Surely if
history teaches anything, it teaches the vanity of politics.
From Castillon I bent my course to St. Émilion on the road to Libourne; the
Dordogne, which here twists like a snake in agony, being left somewhat to
the south. The whole country, hill and plain, was clad with vineyards, but
I soon grew weary of looking at the numberless short vines fastened to
stakes in one broad blaze of unchanging sunshine. Even the hanging clusters
of grapes wearied the eye by endless repetition.
By-and-by, out of all this sameness rose a hill in that abrupt manner which
strikes a peculiar character into this southern landscape, and upon
the hill were jutting rocks and a broken mass of strangely-jumbled
masonry-roofs rising out of roofs, gables crushing gables, feudal towers,
great walls, and one tall heaven-pointing spire. This was St. Émilion,
respected in the Middle Ages as a strong fortress of the Bordelais, and now
so famous for its wine that the locality has long ceased to produce more
than an insignificant part of that which is put into bottles bearing the
name of a saint who drank nothing stronger than water. Only the wine that
is grown upon the sides of the hill is really St. Émilion; it changes as
soon as the vineyards reach the plain. It is then a _vin de plaine_, and is
no more like the other than if it had been grown fifty miles away.
Celtic remains point to the conclusion that, long before the foundation of
the first monastery, which was the beginning of the mediaeval town, the
Gauls had an _oppidum_ on this hill. St. Émilion became a fortified town in
the reign of King John, who signed a charter here, and it may be said to
have been thoroughly gained over to the English cause by Edward I., who
granted numerous privileges to the burghers. For a short time the place
fell into the power of Philippe IV., but it was in its collegial church in
May, 1303, that the duchy of Aquitaine was ceremoniously restored by the
Seneschal of Gascony to the King of England, represented on this occasion
by the Earl of Lincoln. To reward the inhabitants for their fidelity, and
to compensate them in some sort for the trials which they had endured in
consequence, St. Émilion was made a royal English borough, and enjoyed the
special favour and protection of the sovereign.
It was in this fourteenth century that it rose to the height of its
importance and prosperity. We can gather to-day from the ruins of its
religious buildings and fortifications what that importance must have been.
Besides the monastery dating from the age of Charlemagne, whose monks early
in the twelfth century were placed under the rule of St. Augustin,
two great religious establishments were those of the Minor Friars or
Cordeliers, and the Preaching Friars or Dominicans. Of the vast convent of
these last nothing remains but a very stately and noble fragment of the
church wall, standing isolated on the top of the hill.
During the Hundred Years' War St. Émilion was besieged and taken by Du
Guesclin; but although the burghers were often compelled to dissemble in
order to save their throats, they were always ready to welcome an English
army. They were among the first to follow the example of the men of
Bordeaux, who raised the English flag for the last time in 1452.
During the religious wars of the sixteenth century St. Émilion suffered
grievously from the fury and bestiality of the vile ruffians of both camps.
The excesses of the Norman barbarians when they burnt and pillaged the
town in the ninth century were mild in comparison with those of the
sixteenth-century Christians.
There are few spots more fascinating to the artist and archaeologist than
this ruinous old stronghold of the English kings. One might ramble a long
time over the cobble stones of its steep narrow streets, and about the
ruined ramparts draped with green pellitory and the spurred valerian's
purple flowers, with a mind held in continual tension by the picturesque.
At every angle there is a fresh surprise. The monolithic church, made by
excavating the calcareous rock, which crops out and forms a kind of table
near the top of the crescent-shaped hill, is said to have been mainly the
work of monks in the ninth century. There is no other resembling it, with
the exception of the one at Aubeterre, the idea of which was probably
borrowed here. Steps lead down into the nave, where there is an odour of
ancient death, and where the light darting through windows pierced in the
face of the cliff reveals on each side a row of huge rectangular piers
supporting round-headed arches, all forming part of the rock. These
separate the nave from the aisles, of which there are three, the one
farthest from the centre having been used chiefly for burial. All about are
numerous tomb recesses. The piers and their arches are covered with green
or black lichen, which adds not a little to the gloom and dismalness of
this subterranean church.
[Illustration: MONOLITHIC CHURCH AND DETACHED TOWER AT ST. ÉMILION.]
Ornamental details of the exterior, such as the doorway with its has-relief
of the Last Judgment, are of a much later period than the rude excavations
of the interior. From the platform of rock immediately above the vast
crypt rise a Gothic tower and spire dating from the twelfth century. This
structure, which lends so much character to St. Émilion, appears to belong
to the church beneath; but such is not the case. Although separated, it is
a part of the collegial, now parish, church, which is higher up the hill,
just within the line of the ramparts. It is said to have been built by the
English, but the Romanesque lateral doorway would be strong evidence of
the contrary if there were no other. English influence, however, may have
played some part in the extensive rebuilding which was carried out in the
fourteenth century. The east end, scarcely forming an apse, and pierced in
the centre with a high broad window with a narrower window on each side,
suggests this, as do also the very massive columns of the choir.
Close to the monolithic church is the cavern where the hermit Émilion is
supposed to have dwelt. In order to see it, I had to find a little girl who
kept the key, and who led the way down the steps with a lighted candle. St.
Émilion might have looked far before finding a more unpleasant place to
live in than this cavern. It might be safely guaranteed to kill in a very
short time any man with a modern constitution, unless he were miraculously
preserved from rheumatism and other evils of the flesh. The damp oozes
perpetually from the slimy rock, and the air is like that of a well.
Indeed, there is a little well here called St. Émilion's Fountain. The
spring is intermittent; every two or three minutes the water is seen to
rise with one or more bubbles. It never fails, no matter how prolonged the
drought may be.
The little girl pointed out to me a great number of pins lying upon the
sandy bottom of the basin. I asked her how they came there, and she said
that they were dropped into the water by people--chiefly young girls--who
wished to know when they would be married. If two pins that had been
dropped in together crossed one another upon the bottom, it was a sign that
the person who let them fall would be married within a year. As I could
distinguish none that were crossed, I concluded that all who had made
the experiment here were condemned to celibacy. This form of
superstition--doubtless of Celtic origin wherever met with--is much more
frequent in Brittany than in Guyenne.
Close to the 'grotto' is an old charnel-house quarried in the rock with a
dome-shaped roof, at the top of which is a round hole that lets the light
of heaven into the awful pit. This opening formerly served another purpose.
There was a cemetery above, and as the bones were turned up from the
shallow soil to make room for others still clothed with their flesh, they
were thrown down the orifice. For those who did not wish to be disturbed
after death, the charnel-house was the securer place of burial. Here, as in
the underground church, one sees numerous recesses in the wall which were
made for tombs. Those who feel the need of sombre ideas will be as likely
to find the incentive to them here as anywhere. Oh, what ghostly places are
these old southern towns, with their heaps of ruins, their churches as dim
as sepulchres, their crypts and charnel-houses filled with bones!
[Illustration: CONVENT OF THE CORDELIERS: THE CLOISTERS.]
Fellow-wanderer, come and see with me the convent of the Cordeliers. There
are no monks here now. Since the Revolution their habitation has been open
to all the winds of heaven, and the shadow of the wild fig-tree falls where
that of their own forms once fell as they stood in the stalls of their
chapel choir. In the cloisters, the ivy and the pellitory and the little
cranesbill have crept with the moss and the lichen from stone to stone, and
in the centre of the quadrangle stands a great walnut-tree that spreads its
branches and long leaves over all the grassy ground. Birds that cannot
be seen sing aloft under the flaming sky; but here in the shadow of the
arcades and the dark foliage nothing moves except the snail and the lazy
toad at evening amidst the damp weeds. The stones that we see here in this
ruined convent bear testimony to the eternal restlessness of man's desire
to give some fresh artistic form to his religious aspiration. Some were
carved in the Romanesque period, others in the Gothic, others in the
Renaissance. Witnesses of the human mind in different ages, all are
crumbling and growing green together, sharing a common fate.
Among the many holes and corners full of curious interest at St. Émilion,
but which have to be searched for by the visitor, is the cave where during
the Reign of Terror seven of the Girondins sought refuge, and where they
remained hidden from their persecutors several months, notwithstanding
the unflagging efforts made to discover their retreat. Their enemies were
convinced that they were somewhere in the town, or, rather, underneath the
town, for the rock on which it rests is honeycombed with quarries. These
Girondins were Guadet, Salles, Barbaroux, Petlon, Buzot, Louvet, and
Valady. Guadet was a native of St. Émilion, and he had a relative there
named Madame Bouquey. She and her husband were a brave and noble-minded
couple at a time when the craven-hearted--always the accomplices of
tyrants--were in the ascendancy everywhere. They sheltered Guadet and his
companions in a cave under their garden. The fugitives had first thought of
hiding in the old quarries, but they realized that they would be much safer
in the cave.
Hearing that the 'Grotte des Girondins' was in the garden of the school,
now kept by Christian Brothers, thither I went. A little boy in a long
black blouse, with a leather belt round his waist, having obtained the
permission, pulled open a trapdoor in the garden, and, candle in hand, led
the way down a flight of steps into a cavern, about the same size as St.
Émilion's, but much dryer and more comfortable. On one side of it was an
opening, which was made perceptible by a very faint glimmer of daylight. I
found that this opening was in the side of a well. The water was still
far below, and the surface of the earth was about fifteen feet above. The
trap-door entrance--so the Brothers assured me--did not exist in the
last century, and the only entrance to the cave was by the well. It was,
therefore, an admirable hiding-place, for the lateral opening was not
distinguishable from above, and anybody looking down and seeing the water
at the bottom would have thought it quite unnecessary to search any further
there. The Girondins were let down by the rope, or they let themselves
down. As time went on, the position of Monsieur and Madame Bouquey, on
whom strong suspicion rested, became more and more difficult; and when
the fugitives were informed that commissioners were on their way to St.
Émilion, they resolved that, rather than expose their benefactors
to further peril, they would make an attempt to escape in different
directions. Louvet got to Paris, and was the only one of the seven who
did not come by a violent death. Guadet and Salles were captured at St.
Émilion, and were executed, as a matter of course. Barbaroux was also
taken, after making an unsuccessful attempt to blow out his brains, and he,
too, was guillotined at Bordeaux. Buzot and Petion stabbed themselves in a
field between St. Émilion and Castillon, where their bodies were found
half eaten by wolves. The seventh, Valady, was brought to the scaffold at
Périgueux. Monsieur and Madame Bouquey met the same fate. And it is with
this page of modern history that the quiet little garden of the Brothers'
school, its well and hidden cavern, are so tragically associated.
Near a ruinous _donjon_, called the Château du Roi, and attributed to Louis
VIII., now much overgrown with herbs and shrubs, I stood on a bastion of
the town wall, overlooking the crescent-shaped hollow, covered with houses,
bits of fortification older than the outer wall, ruined convents--a chaos
of lichen-tinted stones and tiles gilded by the warm yet tenderly softened
sunshine of early evening. And as I gazed, I longed the more to be able
to carry away a picture of that scene, with all its tones and tints, that
would last in the memory, as I also wished to draw out of it all the
meaning of what I felt. I left with a sense of failure, of weakness, of
confused impressions, which was to me like a gnawing weevil of the mind, on
the road to Libourne.
Vines, vines, nothing but vines, gradually shading down to the darkness of
the night that covers them. Then, when the dusky gauze of the cloudless
night is drawn all over it, the broad leafy land sleeps under the sparkling
stars.
Here at Libourne I am in a town of whose English origin there can be no
doubt. It was one of the thirteenth-century _bastides_ founded in Guyenne
by Edward I. These _bastides_ were at the outset intended as places of
refuge for serfs and other non-belligerents of the rural districts in time
of war. Their character was that of free or open towns, and most of the
burgs that still bear the name of Villefranche in the South of France were
originally _bastides_. Not a few of them keep the name of _La bastide_,
in combination with some other to this day. They are to be found all over
Guyenne and a great part of Languedoc. They were often fortified with a
wall, a palisade, and a moat. Their strong peculiarity, however, the one
that has been preserved in spite of all the changes that centuries have
brought, was the rectilinear and geometrical manner in which they were laid
out. In contrast to the typical mediaeval 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. Consequently, however old the houses may be,
such towns have somewhat of a modern air. For the same reason, one of the
chief attributes of the picturesque--an accidental meeting of various
motives--is absent. To the inhabitants of these free towns a certain
quantity of land was apportioned in equal parts, for which a fixed rent was
paid to the king or other feudal lord.
I have said that the _bastides_ were not picturesque. In their early days
they must have been quite hideous; but time, that plays havoc with human
beings, lends to such of their works as may offer to it the resistance of a
long, hard struggle an interest which becomes at length a beauty. There
is usually to be found in these towns the thirteenth-century _place_, or
square, which formed, as it were, the heart of the commune. Along each of
the four sides is a Gothic arcade, on which the first and all the higher
storeys of the houses rest. Thus, there is a broad pavement completely
vaulted over on each side of the quadrilateral, where people can walk,
sheltered from the sun or rain, These old squares, wherever they are found,
are now always picturesque.
Libourne, from being a small _bastide_, grew to such importance, on account
of its position on the right bank of the Dordogne and the wine trade that
it was able to carry on by water, that it rivalled Bordeaux before the
close of the English domination, and the question of making it the capital
and the seat of the Prince of Wales and Aquitaine was seriously pondered.
To-day it preserves all the plainness of its line-and-rule origin; but it
has a few redeeming features, such as one side of its ancient square,
with broad pavement under Gothic arches, a picturesque town-hall of the
sixteenth century, and a curious mediaeval tower, with machicolated
embattlements, now capped with a very tall and pointed roof, and known as
the Tour de l'Horloge. It is a remnant of the fourteenth-century ramparts.
The people of Libourne were steadfast partisans of the English to the
last, and after 1453 they did not seek to distinguish themselves by their
resignation to the rule of the French kings. When in 1542 the insurrection
against the salt-tax, commencing at La Rochelle, spread over Saintonge and
the whole of Western Guyenne, the Libournais threw themselves heartily into
the movement. When the time of repression came they were made to smart
sorely for their turbulent spirit. The Place de l'Hotel de Ville, of which
one side remains very much as it was then, bristled with gibbets, and 150
persons were hanged in a single day. The man who had rung the tocsin that
called together the insurgents was suspended by the neck to the hammer of
the bell, as a warning to others not to ring it again unless they had a
better motive.
[Illustration: TOUR DE L'HORLOGE AT LIBOURNE.]
Standing by the broad river, a little above the point where the Isle is
falling into it, carrying down all manner of craft with the tide, I see at
a distance of a couple of miles or so towards the west the hill that is
known in history as Le Tertre de Fronsac. There Charlemagne built a castle,
of which nothing now remains. The hill owes its modern celebrity entirely
to its wine. It is not everybody who knows the virtue of the genuine
Fronsac, especially that which was yielded by the old vines before the
phylloxera destroyed them, but most people are familiar with the brand.
But for this, the _tertre_ would long since have ceased to be famous,
notwithstanding Charlemagne.
The hill has a strange appearance, for it rises abruptly from the river
bank in the midst of the plain. It did not tempt me to walk to it in the
scorching heat, but as a steamboat was going there, I paid two sous and
went on board. I had never been in such a cockle-shell of a steamer before.
It rocked and tumbled like a coracle, and spat and fumed and snorted like a
veritable devil composed of an engine, a couple of paddle-wheels, and a few
boards. Helped by the tide that was pouring out, it went down stream at a
rate that was almost exciting, and in a few minutes I was landed at the
bottom of the famous hill. I made a conscientious attempt to reach the top,
but was stopped just where it began to grow interesting by a notice-board
that warned me, if I ventured any farther, I should be prosecuted and
heavily fined. Such things are not often seen in France. Vineyards are
generally open, but here they were fiercely protected with walls and fences
and notice-boards. The land was evidently very precious. I had wandered
into truly civilized country, where land and manners were too highly
cultivated to please me, and I again regretted the rocky wastefulness that
I had left behind me.
[Illustration: THE HILL OF FRONSAC.]
I turned back, and wandering about the village, which is a straggling one,
looked for the church, hoping that this at least would show something of
interest. Not being able to find it, I asked a man to tell me the way to
it, and he, stopping, said:
'_L'église pour aller prier dedans?_'
What does he mean by asking me that? I thought. Could there be a church at
Fronsac that was not used for praying?
'Yes, that is the kind of church I am looking for.' 'Very good,' rejoined
the man. 'Now I know what you want I can inform you. I put that question to
you because there are some people here called Léglise.'
It was to the church _pour prier dedans_ that I went, not to Mr. Church.
Originally Romanesque, it has been pulled about and changed almost as much
as the Tertre de Fronsac, which I am sure I shall never wish to climb
again.
[Illustration: No Name]