|UGLY and down at the heel," were the uncomplimentary terms used by an
æsthetic fellow traveler to describe this prosperous manufacturing town
situated rather picturesquely on a hill rising above the banks of the
river Somme. And while it may be admitted that St. Quentin is not very
clean looking when viewed from the railway station, certainly a later
and more intimate inspection revealed charms which repaid leisurely
investigation on our part, and even our first view of the gray walls and
gables of the houses, and the quaint pinnacles of the town hall, and the
tower of the church rising against the golden glow of the sunset sky was
quite satisfying.
The road to the town on the hill was by way of the Rue de l'lsle, which
brought us to the small square on which was the flamboyant Gothic Hôtel
de Ville. It had a most charming and unusual pent roof, over which rose
a slender tower with large clock face shining in the sunlight. On the
ground floor of the façade was an open arcaded gallery above which were
richly ornamented flamboyant Gothic windows divided by niches. The upper
story had a quaint and ornate balustrade and three gables. From the
central gable the campanile rose gracefully.
This much we were able to see on our way to the Hôtel du Cygne, the
landlady of which gave us more comfort than our quondam traveling
companion had led us to expect. This individual quite abandoned us
to our fate thereafter, as impossible Yankees who gloated over
picturesqueness and gables, and meekly ate whatever was set before
them--even of an omelette which he scorned, and fussed about at the
table d'hôte. He listened with a sarcastic grin to our admiring comment
on the furnishings of the dining-room, with its paneled walls in the
Flemish fashion, on which hung brass placques and some good old china
plates, and after lighting a cigarette, noisily kicked back his chair,
shrugged his shoulders, and vanished from our ken forever.
Madame told us that he was a "commis-voyageur" in the woolen trade, from
Brussels, and "bien difficile."
St. Quentin was the ancient capital of the Gaulish Veromanduens, and
took its present name from Caius Quintinus, a priest who came here to
preach Christianity in the third century, and for his pains was martyred
by the Prefect Rictius Varus.
Honor to his remains was encouraged by St. Eloi in the time of Dagobert.
Whilst here we may recall that the building of the Escurial was due to
a vow which Philip II of Spain made in case of success, when he was
besieging St. Quentin in 1557.
The town was given back to France in 1589, and in the following year was
bestowed as a dowry upon Mary Stuart, who possessed its revenues till
her death. On January 19, 1871, a great victory was gained near St.
Quentin by the Prussian General Goeben over the French army of the
north, * under Faidherbe.
* Hare's "Northeastern France."
In the "Place du Huit Octobre" was a very good monument by Barrias,
symbolizing the successful defense of the town against the first attack
by the Germans on October 8, 1870. We found that the Hôtel de Ville
contained a most unusual "Salle du conseil," a large well proportioned
room, the roof of which rested upon two circular wooden vaults. This
was furnished with a most elaborate mantel or chimney piece in the mixed
Gothic and Renaissance styles, and of remarkable workmanship. In the
great German retreat of April, 1917, this noble building was blown
up with bombs. Perhaps they placed upon it, as they did upon other
shattered structures, a sign bearing the inscription: "Nicht Argern, nur
Wundern."
There was a noble "Collegiate Church of St. Quentin" near this Hôtel
de Ville, considered by architects to be a splendid example of French
Gothic of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. This was unfortunately
so shut in by small buildings as to make a study of it difficult. Its
choir, nave, and portal, and its really vast height, formed unusual
features, and added to these wonders were the beautiful triforium and
terminal windows of the principal transept (there were two of these,
"very rare in a Gothic church," says Hare).
The oldest part of the church was easily discovered between these
transepts. There were seven absidal chapels; in that of St. Roch was the
incised tombstone of "Mahaus Patrelatte," dated 1272.
Under the choir were crypts said to have been of the ninth century,
and in one of these was a stone sarcophagus of St. Quentin and
SS. Victorious and Gentianus, who were St. Quentin's companions in
martyrdom. The west portal of the church was formerly adorned with
a large number of statues, vestiges of which were plainly visible.
A statue of Quentin Delatour, a famous draftsman in crayon of the
eighteenth century, a native of the town, stood before the church; it
was by Lauglet the sculptor, and of considerable merit. A collection of
Delatour's crayon drawings were in the small museum in the rue du
Petit-Origny....
Unfortunate St. Quentin, now once more in ashes, and this time so
completely obliterated that nothing remains on the hill but some
blackened ragged piles of masonry, was besieged by Philip II in 1558,
when war broke out between Picardy and Flanders.
"Philip II had landed there with an army of forty-seven thousand men,
of whom seven thousand were English. Never did any great sovereign
and great politician provoke and maintain for long such important wars
without conducting them in some other fashion than from the recesses
of his cabinet and without ever having exposed his life on the field
of battle. The Spanish army was under the orders of Emmanuel-Philibert,
Duke of Savoy, a young warrior of thirty, who had won the confidence of
Charles V. He led it to the siege of St. Quentin, a place considered one
of the bulwarks of the kingdom.
"Philip II remained at some leagues' distance in the environs. Henry II
was ill prepared for so serious an attack; his army, which was scarcely
20,000 strong, mustered near Laon under orders of the Duke of Nevers,
Governor of Champagne; at the end of July, 1557, it hurried into
Picardy, under the command of the Constable de Montmorency, who was
supported by Admiral de Coligny, his nephew, by the Duke of Enghien, by
the Prince of Condé, by the Duke of Montpensier, and by nearly all the
great lords and the valiant warriors of France. They soon saw that St.
Quentin was in a deplorable state of defense; the fortifications
were old and badly kept up; soldiers and munitions of war, as well as
victuals were all equally deficient. Coligny did not hesitate, however;
he threw himself into the place on the 2nd of August during the night
with a small corps of 700 men and Saint Remy, a skillful engineer, who
had already distinguished himself in the defense of Metz. The Admiral
packed off the useless mouths, repaired the walls at the points
principally threatened, and reanimated the failing courage of the
inhabitants.
"The Constable and his army came within hail of the place; and
d'Andelot, Coligny's brother, managed with great difficulty to get 450
men into it.
"On the 10th of August the battle was begun between the two armies. The
Constable affected to despise the Duke of Savoy's youth: 'I will soon
show him,' said he, 'a move of an old soldier.'
"The French army, being very inferior in numbers, was for a moment on
the point of being surrounded. The Prince of Condë sent the Constable
warning. 'I was serving in the field,' answered Montmorency, 'before the
Prince of Condé came into the world; I have good hopes of still giving
him lessons in the art of war for some years to come.'
"The valor of the Constable and his comrades-in-arms could not save
them from the consequences of their stubborn recklessness, and their
numerical inferiority; the battalions of Gascon infantry closed their
ranks, with pikes to the front, and made a heroic resistance, but all
in vain, against repeated charges of the Spanish cavalry; and the defeat
was total.
"More than 3,000 men were killed; the number of prisoners amounted to
double this figure; and the Constable, left upon the field with his
thigh shattered by a cannon ball, fell into the hands of the Spaniards,
as was also the case with the Dukes of Longueville and Montpensier,
la Rochefoucauld, d'Aubigné, etc.... The Duke of Enghien, Viscount de
Turenne and a multitude of others, many great names amidst a host of
obscure, fell in the fight. The Duke of Nevers and the Prince of Condé,
sword in hand, reached La Fère with the remnants of their army. Coligny
remained alone at St. Quentin with those who survived of his little
garrison, and a hundred and twenty arquebusiers whom the Duke of Nevers
threw into the place at a loss of three times as many. Coligny held
out for a fortnight longer, behind walls that were in ruins and were
assailed by a victorious army. At length, on the 27th of August, the
enemy entered St. Quentin in shoals.
"The Admiral, who was still going about the streets with a few men to
make head against them, found himself hemmed in on all sides, and did
what he could to fall into the hands of a Spaniard, preferring rather to
await on the spot the common fate than to incur by flight any shame or
reproach. They took him prisoner, after having set him to rest a while
at the foot of the ramparts, and took him away to their camp, where as
he entered, he met Captain Alonzo de Cazieres, commandant of the old
bands of Spanish infantry; when up came the Duke of Savoy, who ordered
the said Cazieres to take the Admiral to his tent." *
* Commentaire de François de Rabutin sur les Guerres entre
Henri II., roi de France, et Charles Quint, empereur. Vol.
I, p. 95, in the Petitot Collection.
"D'Andelot, the Admiral's brother, succeeded in escaping across the
marshes. Being thus master of St. Quentin, Philip II, after having
attempted to put a stop to the carnage and plunder, expelled from the
town, which was half in ashes, the inhabitants who had survived, and
the small adjacent fortresses of Ham and Catalet did not hesitate long
before surrendering. Five years later, in 1557, after the battle and
capture of St. Quentin, France was in a fit of stupor; Paris believed
the enemy to be already beneath her walls; many of the burgesses were
packing up and flying--some to Orleans, some to Bourges, some still
further." * And now once more history repeats itself in the sacking and
burning of this quaint town, in the retreat of the invader of 1914-5
after three years of agony endured by its people. "God makes no account
of centuries, and a great deal is required before the most certain and
most salutary truths get their place and their rights in the minds
and communities of men," says Guizot, quaintly, and thus dismisses the
record of Henry II: "On the 29th of June, 1559, a brilliant tournament
was celebrated in lists erected at the end of the street of Saint
Antoine, almost at the foot of the Bastile. Henry II, the Queen, and the
whole court had been present at it for three days."
* Guizot's "Histoire de France." Vol. Ill, p. 204.
"The entertainment was drawing to a close. The King, who had run several
tilts 'like a sturdy and skillful Cavalier,' wished to break yet another
lance, and bade the Count de Montgomery, captain of the guards, to run
against him. Montgomery excused himself; but the King insisted. The tilt
took place. The two jousters, on meeting, broke their lances skilfully;
but Montgomery forgot to drop at once, according to usage, the fragment
remaining in his hand; he unintentionally struck the King's helmet and
raised the visor, and a splinter of wood entered Henry's eye; he fell
forward upon his horse's neck."
All the appliances of art were useless; the brain had been pierced.
Henry II languished for eleven days and expired on the tenth of July,
1559, aged forty years and some months. "An insignificant man and a
reign without splendor, though fraught with facts pregnant of grave
consequences," concludes the historian.
The fame of Henry Martin, noted as an historian, who died in 1883, was
commemorated by a bronze statue "such as the chimes and the great bell
of the Collegiate erected before the Lycée," a rather handsome building
in the Rue du Palais de Justice. Before leaving St. Quentin in April,
1917, the invaders shipped this statue to Germany, it is announced in
the German press, and melted it up at the gun works with other scrap
metal, "such as the chimes and the great bell of the Collegiate Church
of St. Quentin."
A few miles to the northeast on the river Oise was the small town of
Guise, most picturesquely situated, and commanded by an ancient castle,
or chateau, as these ruins are sometimes styled, which dated from the
sixteenth century, and was occupied by a few soldiers as a sort of
garrison. In this château in troublous times the nuns of the Guise, and
those of the neighboring nunneries as well, took refuge. There was
here, too, a most famous chapter of monks, but the nuns were of greater
renown. These threw off the severe rules of St. Benedict in the twelfth
century, and becoming "chanoinesses," lived apart with the utmost
comfort, their abbess bearing a scepter rather than a cross. Endowed by
successive ducal rulers, this chapter became one of the most illustrious
of the province. "Its abbess, always chosen from a family of the most
exalted rank, exercised almost sovereign authority over the domain, and
furthermore in virtue of a document from the Emperor Rudolph (1290),
bore the title of Princess of the Holy Empire. She was elected only
by the united voice of the chapter, and went to Rome to receive
consecration from the Pope himself in the Lateran. To him she is said to
have offered in sign of homage, every three years, a white horse and a
piece of purple velvet; and when after many years the Pope remitted this
tax, she bore, in all solemn processions, a red silk banner sprinkled
with gold and silver buds in remembrance of it. A double handed sword
was carried before her in processions. She had the right of granting
liberty to prisoners. In the choir of the cathedral she sat upon a
throne placed upon a carpet of crimson velvet ornamented with gold
leaves, and upon fête days she held 'grand-couvert,' as was the custom
with sovereigns. The chapter counted sixty-four abbesses, of whom the
last in line was Louise-Adelaide de Bourbon-Condé." *
* Brantôme, Paris, 1822. Vol. I.
Considering its part in history, it is surprising how little interest
was taken in Guise of late years. In 1339 the English, under John of
Hainault, burned the town, but were unable to conquer the castle, owing
to the courageous resistance of the small body of warriors who were
commanded by the noble lady of its absent lord, the daughter of John
of Hainault himself. In the curious old crypt were the tombs of several
abbesses, and the shrine contained the relics of SS. Romaric, Arnat, and
Idulphe, which the nuns brought with them in the tenth century from the
old church on the hill. On one of the streets were ancient houses with
stone arcades.
Guise was the birthplace of Camille Desmoulins, the revolutionary. Near
the town, which was busy and prosperous, with a population of
eight thousand or so, there was a sort of workmen's colony upon the
communistic plan, and included a "phalanstère," or common dwelling place
for the members, upon the Fourier plan, founded by some philanthropist.
As far as we could judge superficially it was successful, and it is said
the chance visitor was always welcomed most cordially by the members who
happened to be present.
These inoffensive people have been shipped away, no one now seems to be
able to say just where, and the little town, gutted by fire, has ceased
to exist save in the memory of those who once knew its charm.
A few miles southwest of St. Quentin, on the river Somme, was a
small town named Ham, which had, however, nothing in common with that
excellent viand. Here was a famous château of the tenth century, of the
Comtes de Vermondais. In 1374 it passed to the Coucy family, and then
to the Comtes of St. Pol, from whom it came by marriage to the house of
Bourbon-Vendôme. This great stronghold had a donjon, the walls of which
were thirty-five feet thick, and the room inside it was one hundred
and ten feet broad, and the same number of feet high. In shape it was
a rectangle, flanked at each corner by a round tower, and with square
towers on the north and west. Rising from a canal on the northeast angle
was a huge round tower, named the Tour de Connétable, built by Louis
de Luxembourg in 1490. Emblazoned on the stone over the portal was the
motto of the founder: "Mon Myeulx" (My Best). The walls of this tower
were said to have been of enormous thickness. The figures varied so much
that I omit all of them, but from the appearance of the tower one might
believe even the most exaggerated statements.
Its lower apartment was a vast hall of hexagonal shape, the vaulting of
which was Gothic in style, and we were shown some curious arched spaces,
said to be intended for furnaces or magazines to be blown up and thus
destroy the castle in case of its capture. There was a great "Salle de
Gardes," where the soldiers slept and ate in time of siege, and this
contained an enormous fireplace, a well of considerable depth, and an
oven where bread had been baked. Above this vast room was the "Chambre
de Conseil," lighted by a single large window, and furnished with
stone benches below it. Here Jeanne d'Arc was imprisoned by Jean of
Luxembourg, and many other notables languished in the dungeons from the
time of the Revolution down to the time of the capture of Prince Louis
Napoléon, in August, 1840, at Boulogne, and from which he escaped
disguised as a workman on the morning of May 22, 1846. He took refuge at
St. Quentin, went thence to Belgium, and finally reached England.
Like all of the other great castles in the region occupied by the
invaders, Ham was blown up before the German army "victoriously"
retreated to the now celebrated "Hindenburg" line, in April, 1917.