contemporary letter-writer only implies it by mentioning others, of whom
he speaks a little scornfully, as well as the men of Bayeux, Avranches,
and Coutances, and the Breton and Mansel allies. When Robert of Torigny
speaks of the "acies Anglorum," he doubtless simply means, according to
a very common form of speech, the force of the King of the English,
whatever they might be, either "genere" or "natione." But all who were
under the King's immediate command had in some sort to become Englishmen
in the hour of battle. Like Brihtnoth and Harold, King Henry stood and
waited for the enemy on foot. So did Randolf of Bayeux and the younger
William of Warren; so did the wary counsellor who had little love for
Englishmen, Robert of Beaumont, Count of Meulan, and presently to be
Earl of Leicester, forefather in the female line of another Earl who
loved them well. Seven hundred horsemen only kept the two flanks of the
infantry. The main body of the horse, Breton and Mansel, stood apart.
King Henry's footmen, perhaps with some little advantage of the ground,
stood as firm in their ranks as the fathers of some of them had stood
forty years before when the lord of Meulan was foremost in the charge
against them. They bore up against every charge of the ducal force till
Count Helias, with his reserve, chose a happy moment and broke in on
their assailants with his horsemen. The lord of Belleme fled for his
life; the Duke of the Normans and the Count of Mortain became the
prisoners of their conqueror and near kinsman.
The prison of Count William was a strait one. Henry might fairly look on
him as a traitor, and it was the general belief that he paid for his
treason with his eyes. Here we may perhaps see the groundwork for the
foolish story that Duke Robert's fate was equally hard. But Henry was
far too wise to commit so useless a crime. The captive Duke spent the
remaining twenty-eight years of his life in this castle, and that,
treated with all honour, but kept under such restraint as was needful,
specially after he had once tried to get away altogether. He did not
even cease to be Duke of the Normans. His brother administered his duchy
for him; but he never took the ducal title while Robert lived. Robert,
in short, was in much the same case as Henry III. was at the hands of
Earl Simon. To be carefully looked after at Bristol or Cardiff must have
been dull work for one who had scaled the walls of Jerusalem; but in his
brother's keeping Robert assuredly never had to lie in bed for want of
clothes. As for his comrade Eadgar, he was let go free altogether. The
crowned King had no need to fear the momentary King-elect of forty years
before. We only wish to know whether he did himself live to so
preternatural an age as to be a pensioner of Henry II., or whether he
who bears his name in the accounts of that reign is a son of whom
history has no tale to tell.
We go back from Tinchebray to Flers. Next day the main line takes us to
Argentan. The name of _Tenarcebrai_ is written in our own Chronicles; so
is that of _Argentses_; only is that really Argentan or only Argences?
ARGENTAN
1892
A good many of the places which we go through on such a journey as we
are now taking in Western Normandy, full as they are of historic and
local interest on particular grounds, might easily fail to attract, not
only the ordinary tourist, but even the general antiquarian traveller.
No one, for instance, need go to La Lande-Patry, unless he is anxious to
get a better understanding of a single sentence of the _Roman de Rou_.
Even at Tinchebray the strictly historic interest is all. Unless we
except that single arcade on the tower of St. Remigius, there is really
nothing memorable to show in the shape of either church or castle. With
Argentan the case is different. Any one who has a turn for mediaeval
antiquities in any shape would surely reckon that town as one of high
interest. With no such single memory as the great fight of Tinchebray,
it plays a certain part in history through many ages; the local history
of the town itself is remarkable, and its existing monuments are of
various kinds and instructive in several ways. And the means of getting
there are as simple as any means well can be; for Argentan is a
principal station on the line from Paris to Granville. It is also a
station on the great cross line from Caen to Le Mans. This position
makes it a good centre for seeing several places in various directions,
to say nothing of others for which none of the many railways of Normandy
has as yet done anything. In the journey now recorded it served as a
centre for Falaise and Seez, and for what will to most people be the
less familiar names of Exmes and Almeneches, and it might easily have
been made a centre for other places.
Argentan is a kind of town to which it would be hard to find an exact
fellow in England. It is not the head of any district; it is not the
seat of any great ecclesiastical foundation; such importance as it has
in history seems to have come from the presence of a castle which not
uncommonly received princely sojourners. Yet it is plainly something
more than one of those towns which have simply sprung up at the gate of
a castle. It has one main characteristic of a class of towns much
greater than its own: the fortress and the great church stand side by
side in its most prominent quarter. That in the general view the church
is far more conspicuous than the fortress is the result of later havoc;
but we are surprised to find that a church of such dignity in itself
and placed in such a position as the chief church of Argentan was never
the seat of abbot or dean. Falaise is now a larger town than Argentan;
but we feel that at Falaise the town has simply grown up at the foot of
the castle hill. Saint Gervase at Falaise is no fellow to the mighty
fortress on the _felsen_, as Saint German of Argentan must have been to
the _donjon_ of Argentan, even when that _donjon_ was better seen than
it is now. The name of Argentan does not at once lead us to some Gaulish
tribe or to some Roman prince; but it does not, like that of Falaise, at
once carry its own meaning with it in the speech of some or other of the
Teutonic conquerors of Gaul. We feel that Falaise, looking up to the
great keep and to the tower of Talbot, is merely a magnificent Dunster
or Richmond--we cannot say Windsor; for the _sainte chapelle_ of Saint
George has no fellow there. But Argentan is a miniature, a very small
miniature certainly, but still a miniature, of Durham and Lincoln and
Angers. That is, church and fortress stand together on the highest point
in the town.
Is Argentan therefore to be set down among the hill-towns? Falaise, of
all places in the world, assuredly is not; the castle is set on a hill,
but not the town. But can we give the name to Argentan? Some scruple may
be felt by one who has come from Saint-Lo, from Coutances, or from
Avranches. Yet the ascent from the Orne to the upper part of the town
is very marked, and as the chief buildings, ecclesiastical and military,
are gathered together on the higher ground, there is a true akropolis.
And there is no doubt that this akropolis had its own circuit of wall,
distinct from that of the lower town. This last took in a large space,
and was of a strangely complicated shape, running out hither and thither
in various directions. According to all our experience of other places,
we would take for granted that the inner circuit was the older. Here, we
should say, was the original settlement; the town, after the usual
manner of towns, outstripped its boundaries; it spread itself in
whatever directions suited its inhabitants; lastly, the suburbs which
thus grew up were taken into the town, and were fenced in by a second
wall. This, one need hardly say, is a thing which has happened over and
over again, in this place and that, till we take it for granted as the
explanation of such a state of things as we see at Argentan. But in a
local book, in which a great deal of information about Argentan is
brought together, _Le Vieil Argentan_, by M. Eugene Vimont, it is
distinctly asserted that the case is the other way. The wider circuit,
he tells us, is the older. In the wars of the early days of William,
King Henry of France burned Argentan. The burning is undoubted; it is
recorded by William of Jumieges. But M. Vimont's inference seems
strange--namely, that after this destruction the town was rebuilt, but
on a smaller scale. The case would be something like one stage in the
history of Perigueux, when only a part of old Vesona was fortified at
the time of the barbarian invasion of 407, and the part outside the new
walls was forsaken.[49] But an ordinary burning of a town in warfare
like that which went on between France and Normandy did not commonly
lead to such great changes as this, and it is very hard to believe that
the town of Argentan can, in the first half of the eleventh century,
have reached this great extent and this irregular shape. We are bound to
suppose that a local writer who shows much local knowledge has some
reason for what he says. But for a thing so hard to believe some direct
authority should be quoted, and M. Vimont quotes none. Till some other
convincing authority is produced, we shall believe that the growth of
Argentan followed the same law as that of other towns.
It is only in a few small pieces here and there that either the wider or
the narrower circuit of wall has left any sign of itself. But we can
believe both on M. Vimont's witness, and indeed they hardly need any
witness. Each circuit has left its stamp behind it in the way that town
walls do leave it, even when, as walls, they have altogether vanished.
We hold, then, that the narrower circuit, taking in only the higher
ground with the church of Saint German, and the two castles, is the
oldest. The church and the _donjon_ doubtless had predecessors before
King Henry came against Argentan. His burning need not have wrought any
more of lasting destruction than a hundred other such burnings. The town
sprang up again; in course of time, when Argentan flourished under
princely favour, it grew beyond its old bounds. The growth of the
inhabited town called for a wider circuit of walls. The new suburbs,
with the church of Saint Martin, were taken within the fortified area.
Argentan no longer merely looked down on the Orne, but was washed by it.
The upper town, then, besides the church of Saint German, contains not
only one, but two castles. On the highest ground of all, in the
north-west corner of the enclosure, are the remains of a large polygonal
keep, which keeps its name of the _donjon_. It makes very little show,
being sadly crowded in by houses. Somewhat lower down is the _chateau_,
a graceful building of the late French Gothic, now used as the Palace of
Justice. The building itself has hardly any defensive character about
it, but it stands as part of the general line of defence, and it was
also connected with the _donjon_ by an inner wall, parting the two
castles from the town. Some parts of the wall in this neighbourhood,
both inner and outer, are still standing; and near the _chateau_ is the
desecrated chapel of Saint Nicolas, keeping some good windows.
The _chateau_ would attract anywhere; the fragment of the _donjon_
simply peeps over houses. The chief thing in Argentan after all is the
great church of Saint German. Both this and the smaller church of Saint
Martin down below give us most instructive lessons in the course by
which the late Gothic of France gradually changed into _Renaissance_. As
we have often said, this transition has in England to be studied almost
wholly in houses, while in France we trace it in churches, and grand
churches also. The church of Saint German at Argentan is undoubtedly a
noble pile. At a distance it suggests the memory of Saint Peter at
Coutances on a larger scale. We seem to look on the same grouping of
central and western towers, though the central tower of Saint German's
is not octagonal, but square. But the western tower at Argentan is not
western in the same sense as the western tower at Coutances. That is, it
does not stand in the same line with the central tower. It is not a
western, but a north-western tower. This allows a greater variety of
outline than can be had at Saint Peter's. But the general effect of the
towers, all of which evidently received their last finish after the days
of pure Gothic had passed away, is essentially the same in the two
cases. In the central tower of Saint German this finish is nothing more
than a cupola of wood and lead on a handsome but not lofty lantern of
late Gothic, wonderfully good, outside at least, for the date of 1555.
But the general effect is not bad. The north-western tower, known as _la
grosse tour_, has a more curious history. The lowest stage is good and
rich Flamboyant, with a highly adorned porch. On this is a much plainer
stage, from which the Gothic feeling has passed, but which has no
distinctly _Renaissance_ detail. It has long narrow windows with
flat-arched heads. This must have been building in 1617, when the
governor of the town forbade the tower to be carried higher, lest it
should overlook the _donjon_. We think of William Rufus bidding
Hildebert of Le Mans to pull down his pair of newly built towers.[50]
The hindrance was afterwards withdrawn, and in 1638 the tower was
finished with its fantastic, but certainly taking, cupola. The nave was
begun in 1421, when Normandy was ruled for a season by the descendants
of its ancient dukes. It was carried on gradually for 220 years, and was
finished in 1641. The changes in style during this time are easily
traced. The nave is late but pure Gothic, a really fine design, though a
good deal spoiled by the loss of tracery in so many of the windows both
in aisles and clerestory. In a large panelled triforium a very keen eye
may possibly detect in the lowest range of ornament a tendency--it is
nothing more--to _Renaissance_ ideas. Or it may only be fancy suggested
by the stages further east. Certainly the nave, if not quite of
first-rate merit, has a really striking effect, and is far better than
most panel work of the time. The transepts are of the same style. They
are finished north and south with apses, which are really graceful,
though we miss the rose-windows which we should otherwise have looked
for in a French church on such a scale as this. The choir too, as seen
out of the nave, is well-proportioned and effective, though we see that
the windows in the apse have flat arches and no tracery. The apse, if we
can call it so, has the strange singularity of ending in a point, and
some odd details have crept into the bosses of the vault. But, in the
general view from the nave, the only thing that mars the general harmony
and good effect is the treatment of the lantern. The four lantern arches
have the flattened shape of the latest Gothic; but, oddly enough, the
variety here chosen is the English four-centred arch, not the usual
French shape, three-centred, elliptic, or actually flat-headed. But both
the English and the French form are quite unsuited for pier-arches, and
for lantern arches yet more. And, though the work of the lantern is
quite good outside, yet within we see that the enemy has begun to take
possession. There is perhaps no actual un-Gothic detail, but the feeling
of the arcade of flat-headed arches which forms the gallery shows the
way in which things are tending.
We go into the choir. There, setting aside the apse windows, the arcade,
triforium, clerestory, are still pure, if very late Gothic; the new
fashion comes in one detail only; the vaulting shafts have an odd
kind of Ionic capital. It is in the latest part of all, the chapels
round the choir, that the new taste comes in most strongly, and even
there it is not altogether dominant. It is very strange outside, where
heavy flying-buttresses are tricked out with little columns. Within,
pairs of such little columns are the chief ornament. But they support no
arches, only scraps of entablature. The arches of the roof, the windows,
and everything else, are still of the elliptic shape, and they still
keep the late Gothic mouldings. No building better shows what a long
fight was waged between the two styles. Saint German at Argentan is not
like Saint Eustace, where we see a grand Gothic conception carried out
without a single correct Gothic detail. Here not only the conception,
but the great mass of the internal detail, is purely Gothic; the new
fashion thrusts itself in only in particular parts.
This last remark is specially true of the smaller church of Argentan,
that of Saint Martin. Here we have not the full cruciform shape. There
is no central tower or lantern, but only lower transepts projecting from
a continuous nave and choir, whose roof-line, within and without, runs
uninterruptedly from east to west. The only tower is a small octagonal
one with a spire at the north-west corner. The peculiarity within is
that, while the arcade and clerestory are still late Gothic, the
triforium between them has run off into _Renaissance_. The reason seems
clear. The new fashion affected details long before it touched the great
lines of the building. The triforium at this date is, as at Saint
German, simply a matter of detail, an arrangement of panelling and the
like. That stage, therefore, was naturally touched by the intruding
foes, while the main features, like the pillars and pier-arches, are as
yet not all affected. At Saint Martin the windows are some of them good
Flamboyant, while some are a kind of very bad Perpendicular. From
others, as at Saint German, the tracery has been cut away altogether.
This church, smaller than Saint German, of a less effective outline, and
standing in the lower part of the town, has nothing like the same grand
effect as the two towers of Saint German on the hill. But it has, with
its tall clerestory, a stately look from some approaches, and it has its
lesson to tell in the history of art.
One is surprised to hear that in the old days Argentan had but a single
_cure_, whose sphere of usefulness took in both Saint German and Saint
Martin. One fully expects to find that such a church as Saint German was
collegiate. But this is one of the characteristic features of French
architecture. We are used in England to great town churches, which never
were more than parish churches, covering a good deal more ground than
Saint German's. But we are not used, save at Shoreham and Bristol, to
see them built, like Saint German, so thoroughly on the type of churches
of higher rank. Boston, Newark, Saint Michael's at Coventry, Trinity
Church at Hull, are as grand in their way as Saint German at Argentan,
only it is in quite another way.
There are a few other things to see at Argentan. On the slope of the
hill is a good late Gothic house, with two arches of street arcade in
front. Add a little more, and we should have the arcade of Carentan; add
a great deal more, and we should have the arcades of Bern. Those who
seek for it will also find a mediaeval bridge of two pointed arches over
one of the branches of the Orne. And it is grievous when, after moving
from Argentan to new quarters at Laigle, we take another look at M.
Vimont's book, and find that we have failed to see a small desecrated
Romanesque church called _Notre-Dame de la Place_. We relieve ourselves
by finding fault with M. Vimont, who certainly does not always put
things in those parts of his book where we should most naturally look
for them.
But we have one point to settle with witnesses nearer home. In the war
between William Rufus and Duke Robert, the Duke, with his ally King
Philip of France, took a castle in which Roger the Poitevin, son of Earl
Roger of Shrewsbury and brother of Robert of Belleme, commanded for
William at the head of 700 knights. Strange to say, they all surrendered
without shedding of blood on the first day of the siege. Our chronicle
calls the place _Argentses_, which Florence of Worcester translates by
_Argentinum castrum_.[51] The name looks like Argences, much nearer to
Caen than Argentan. But one doubts whether Argences could ever have been
a fortress of such importance, perhaps whether it was a fortress at all.
And Robert of Torigny, who must have known the country better than
anybody at Peterborough or Worcester, has _Argentomum_, which certainly
means Argentan, and which may perhaps have the force of a correction. If
so, we have a second visit to Argentan by a French king of the eleventh
century, but not one which made any new building needful.
There is a good deal more to say about Argentan in later times, from
Henry the Second of Normandy and England to Henry the Fourth of Navarre
and France. The traveller is most likely to sojourn at the _Hotel des
Trois Maries_, a resting-place which, in its foundation rather than in
its buildings, goes back to the fourteenth century. It has received many
memorable guests, and its host is said to have purveyed for the last
Henry that we have spoken of. It stands in the main street on the lower
ground. The thought did suggest itself that it might be a trifle too
near the Orne, whose waters at Argentan are not attractively clean, and
that the _Hotel du Donjon_ on the top of the hill might have a better
air. But we can say nothing as to the further merits or demerits of the
Donjon, and the Three Maries sheltered us well enough by the space of
six days.
EXMES AND ALMENECHES
1892
Exmes and Almeneches; one fancies that those names will sound strange to
almost any one save those who have been lately reading the eleventh book
of Orderic the Englishman. Exmes indeed is one of those unlucky places
which, even in the year 1891, remain without the comfort of a railway.
But Almeneches has a station happily placed on two lines; it is visited
by trains between Granville and Paris, and also by trains between Caen
and Le Mans. It thus seems to stand in a closer relation to the world of
modern times than Exmes, to which he who does not care to trust himself
to a Norman omnibus must go on his own account. To Almeneches too one
may go on one's own account; each place makes a pleasant drive from
Argentan. There is nothing very striking on the road to either, but the
road to Almeneches decidedly goes through the prettier country. Each has
a church and a castle to show, or rather each has a church and the site
of a castle. As in so many places, the ecclesiastical building has
outlived the fortress. And this is more to be noticed at Almeneches,
where the church was monastic, and therefore ran greater chances of
destruction in the days of havoc. In general history we cannot venture
to say that either spot has a place. In special Norman history Exmes,
under some or other of the forms of its name, _Oximum_, _Hiesmes_,
anything else, often shows itself; its early importance is noticed by
its giving its name to the large district, _Pagus Oximensis_, _Oixmeiz_,
_Hiesmsis_. And the _Oximenses_ are sometimes spoken of in a special
way, as if they were a distinct people, capable of acting for
themselves. Of Almeneches we hardly hear anything but at one particular
moment, and then we hear of Exmes along with it.
In short, the history of Almeneches, as far as we are concerned with it,
might be summed up under a sensational heading, as "The Sorrows of
Abbess Emma." Her sorrows did not last long, but they were heavy while
they lasted. It was hard for the head of a devout Sisterhood to have
three of the great ones of the earth set upon her at once, one of them
being her own brother. She was daughter of Roger of Montgomery,
afterwards Earl of two shires in England, and of his first wife, Mabel
of Belleme, who bears so evil a reputation for bloodshed and treachery.
She was therefore sister to the heir of her mother's estates and crimes,
to that Robert of Belleme who is charged with a crime from which the
worst Merwing would have shrunk, that of pulling out the eyes of his
little godson, seemingly only for the fun of the thing. But Emma and her
sisters are described as being much better than any of their brothers,
even those who were not so bad as Robert. She may therefore not have
been wholly unfit for the post in which she was set when her father put
her at the head of his newly founded abbey, though she could hardly have
been qualified according to the rule which Gregory the Great laid down
for the monasteries of Sicily, that no abbess should be under sixty
years of age.