France in eighteen hundred and two

Hebricourt was the next great town upon our route, and here we found another church consecrated to Reason. The cap of Liberty, appropriately placed upon the weather-cock, veered round with every different gust of wind—over the door of the church the words “Temple de la Raison” were inscribed.

At Bréteuil, twenty-three miles from Amiens, we dined, or rather starved, at the Hôtel de l’Ange. They made a thousand apologies for the wretched fare put before us, and explained that there was a fair in the town, and the crowd of country people flocking to it had completely demolished every vestige of provision.

After the plates were removed from the table and we had finished our apology for a meal, we visited the fair. There was a great concourse of people, but no noise or disorder. The women were in holiday clothes, wearing close caps. The men were decently attired, but with cocked hats, which gave them a most puritanical appearance. I did not see a single person intoxicated, nor much show of articles of trade. There were many Merry Andrews, quack doctors and puppet shows.

During the greater part of our journey from Amiens to Bréteuil we observed lands in much better order and farmhouses neater and more comfortable than any we had seen in France; the country is agreeably diversified, and woods appear in every direction.

After Bréteuil the country becomes flat and the soil chalky. We changed horses at Wavigny, St. Just and Clermont, the latter being twenty-seven miles from Bréteuil. The road was paved and in excellent order, the country pleasing and fertile, and woods frequent.

A little before we reached Clermont we passed the grounds and plantations of the Duke de FitzJames.[1] The elegant Château was completely destroyed by the Revolutionists, and is at this time a heap of ruins. But the name of the duke has just been erased from the list of émigrés, and all his estates restored to him. He is now in Paris, making arrangements for his future life. The return of their old master is eagerly awaited by the country people, and it is hoped that this beautiful spot will once more flourish.

At Clermont there is a manufactory of painted linen; the environs of the town are gay and picturesque, the neighbouring hills afford several pleasing landscapes, and the culture of the vine gave a charming variety to the scenery. To the left is Liancourt, the magnificent seat of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.[1] This nobleman, well known for his useful writings on agricultural subjects and his travels in North America, has returned from exile, and is improving and embellishing his patrimonial estate.

Cultivation here is more diversified than in the northern Department, through which we have just travelled. Besides vineyards there are fields of lucerne, wheat, clover and corn, and a large quantity of fruit trees. From Longueville, the next post town, we had a delightful ride through the park of Chantilly. On our arrival at Chantilly we slept at the post-house, where a neatness prevailed we had not yet observed in France. The kitchen and stables, usually filthy in a French establishment, were clean and well arranged.

On the next morning we sent to see Chantilly, so famed for its magnificent gardens and for the heroes of Montmorency and Condé who have inhabited it. Alas! it is now one vast heap of ruins. After the fatal August 1792, a horde of Paris miscreants ransacked, pillaged and destroyed the greater part of the chefs d’œuvres of art. The servants, faithful to their ancient master, concealed a number of valuable articles in the woods, and found means to convey most of them to the Prince de Condé.

Of the fidelity and affection of the Prince’s domestics we heard a great deal, and nothing can exceed the respect in which his memory is held by the villagers. On more than one occasion we saw the honest tear start from their eyes at the mention of his name, and the solicitude they expressed for his welfare and their many tender inquiries respecting his present situation in England, convinced us these poor people were sensible they had lost their best friend. When I told them the Prince de Condé[1] lived near London, and was in fairly easy circumstances and kindly received by the King and Royal Family and by the Ministers of State, they were so greatly affected as to excite in our minds a sympathetic emotion of soul, and on the ruins of the Château of Chantilly, on the very spot where once stood the statue of the Great Condé, we shed tears over the fate of his forsaken and proscribed descendant.

No one can be sensible of the desolation of Chantilly unless they saw the gardens, jets d’eau and variegated plantations there previous to 1792.

The Palace is now completely destroyed, there is not even a vestige remaining, all is ruin. As we approached its sight several troops of cavalry were exercising on the lawn. The stables, upon the left, have escaped the fury of the Revolutionists. It is a magnificent building, with all the appearance of a Palace itself. It was originally built for 240 horses. But 400 animals belonging to the Chasseurs stationed at Chantilly are now quartered there without inconvenience.

It is an immense oblong, well paved, with mangers and racks on either side. In the centre is a spacious dome with several apartments now occupied by the smiths of the regiment. All the stags’ heads which ornamented the interior of the building have been struck off, only stumps being left behind. There was formerly a pretty emblematical figure over the reservoir of water under the dome, this has been completely annihilated.

To the left of the stables is the ménage, an open circular piece of ground, encircled by Doric pillars. Here we found the subaltern officers of the regiment instructing their men in the art of riding. The French soldiers, in general, keep their seats well, but their position does not appear so easy as that of the English. They ridicule our long trot as ungraceful, perhaps with some reason; but horses and riders using it are better able to support a long journey than a Frenchman, erect as a post, jogging on a dancing horse.

On one side of the ménage is the court for carriages and grooms, and a few yards behind the tennis court, as large as the one at Versailles, enclosed in a noble stone building. A merchant has purchased this place, and is resolved to reconvert it to its original purpose. From these edifices, which are all in fair order, we advanced to the scene of horror. The Palace is a heap of ruins; it was purchased by two persons, who demolished it for the sake of the materials, which they sold for above ten times the original purchase money. It is just the name of these Vandals should descend to posterity, they are Damois, an ironmonger of the Faubourg St. Antoine, Paris, and Boulet, a carpenter of Compiègne.

The Château d’Enghien has escaped, and is now used as a barrack for Chasseurs. The Château of the Duc de Bourbon, where the family, except on State occasions, formerly resided, was in the days of the Revolutionary Tribunal converted into a prison, 750 prisoners were therein confined; men and women intentionally herded together in the same apartments, in defiance of decency. The Château of Bourbon has been completely stripped of decorations and furniture, only the bare walls remain. The beautiful bridge of La Volière, which formed the communication between the Palace and the Island of Love, was broken down lest the prisoners should escape over it.

We traversed the lonely apartments, and were shown the study of the exiled Prince de Condé, a room the former beauty of which the mutilated paintings still remaining gave a lively idea. The gallery of Conquest, formerly filled with pictures representing the achievements of Montmorencies and Condés, exhibits now merely a dead wall. As we descended the staircase we observed the walls covered by inscriptions of the names of prisoners, often accompanied by verses alluding to their forlorn condition.

The gallery of marble vases opposite to the Pavilion of Apollo, consisting of twenty-two rams’ heads, which spouted into basins beneath them, is utterly destroyed. The Island of Love is a bog, and the Pavilion of Venus no more.

At the foot of the grand staircase was once a jet d’eau, remarkable for its size and beauty. It had a superb marble column in the centre, around which swans sailed in majestic order, while immense quantities of tench played upon the surface of the water. The column, the jet d’eau and the swans have vanished—the water drawn off and the tench devoured by the Revolutionary army. The romantic cottage by the mill has been pulled down—the carcase of the dairy is still standing, but every article it contained was pillaged, for our guide remarked, “The Jacobins never slept as long as there was anything left to seize.” The small cascade, situated opposite the menagerie, was demolished for the sake of the leaden pipes, profitable articles of sale, indeed all the leaden conduits were removed, so that the numerous communications between the different reservoirs of water and the court being destroyed, the waters in rainy weather overflow their basins and pour upon the adjacent ground. Every step we went we trod in water, and to this circumstance the wretched appearance of the Island of Love is due.

There was formerly a great menagerie on the opposite side of the court. The Revolutionary army condemned to death the beasts and birds which inhabited it, on the ground that they were agents in the alleged conspiracy of Condé to starve the people. But as they were apprehensive these animals might make a rally, and feeling their courage unequal to the shock of a pitched battle, and being afraid to butcher the animals in detail, they stationed a couple of pieces of artillery on the neighbouring height, and the onslaught commenced. A heavy fire was opened on the imprisoned sovereigns of the forest by the sovereign people—after a breach had been effected the drums beat a general charge, the centre of the Revolutionary army advanced, bayonets fixed, while the right and left wings kept up a smart fire of musketry upon the invisible enemy. The army entered the breach, and the whole garrison being put to the sword, the majesty of the people shone forth in all its glory.

A person who was an eye-witness of the affair described to me in detail this patriotic act of carnage.

At the end of the great court a place was erected by the Prince of Condé for the accommodation of the sick who resorted there to drink the water of a mineral spring. The spring is filled up, and four mills for boring cannon supplant the building. The violence of destruction was so great that the source of these mineral waters cannot now be traced. The immense kitchen garden has been preserved, and the house, which once belonged to Monsieur Hatorme, steward or homme d’affaires of the Prince. It is now inhabited by Damois, the ironmonger, one of the Vandals who bought and destroyed the Château. When the Jacobins came to murder Monsieur Hatorme he fortunately escaped by a small secret door at the back of the house.

No better idea can be given of the general horror and desolation effected everywhere by the Revolutionists than a sight of Chantilly. Thistles and grass cover every part of the gardens, here and there a few solitary tulips peep out of the earth. The fox that peeped through the crevices of the desolate Castle of Ossian could not give a more faithful conception of ruin than those lonely and deserted flowers.

It would not be amiss to give here a description of Chantilly, given fifteen years ago by that acute and intelligent traveller, Mr. Arthur Young:

“Chantilly! Magnificence is its reigning character. The Château is great and imposing. The gallery of the great Condé’s victories and the cabinet of natural history, rich in fine specimens, most advantageously arranged, demand particular notice. The stable exceeds anything of the kind I have ever seen. It is 580 feet long and 40 broad, and is filled with 240 English horses. I came to Chantilly prepossessed against the idea of a court, but the one here is striking, and gives the effect which magnificent scenes impress. This arises from extent and from the right lines of the water uniting with the regularity of the object in view. Lord Kaimes says the part of a garden contiguous to a house should partake of the regularity of the building. The effect here is lessened by the parterre before the Castle, in which the divisions and the diminutive jets d’eau do not correspond in size with that of the court.

“The menagerie is very pretty, and exhibits a prodigious quantity of domestic poultry from every part of the world, one of the best objects to which a menagerie can be applied. The hameau contains an imitation of an English garden. The most English idea I saw was the lawn in front of the stables; it is large, of good verdure and well kept. The labyrinth, the only complete one I have ever seen. In the Sylvae are many fine and scarce plants. The great beech is the finest I ever saw, straight as an arrow, between eighty and ninety feet in height and twelve feet in diameter, five feet from the ground. Two others near it are almost equal to this superb tree.”

We were accompanied as guide at Chantilly by a man named Touret, formerly garde de chasse to the Prince. He is a very sensible and good-natured man. He was accused of an attachment to his ancient master, and for that crime pursued by the Jacobins with unrelenting vigour. He was compelled to fly into the woods, where he subsisted on acorns, nuts and berries for several days, and concealed himself in secluded haunts, which from his former situation as gamekeeper were known to him.

The contrast between this poor faithful fellow and that of Hautoir, administrator of the district of Genlis, is great. The former, like Shakespeare’s Adam, fled to the woods for the love he bore his master; the latter is an ungrateful miscreant, who rioted on the spoils of his ancient patron. The Prince of Condé had granted to this fellow, who was originally a grocer, every species of parental favour and indulgence. In return for these acts of kindness Hautoir marched at the head of the Revolutionary army to the superb Château, opened it to the ravages of those sanguinary vagabonds, and affixed the municipal seal on the doors of his former benefactor.

Fanaticism in those awful days transported many individuals to the commission of outrages of which I have heard them now express the deepest and most heartfelt repentance. This rogue could only plead a thirst for pillage, which very shortly afterwards was signally proved by his being publicly detected in a particularly mean theft.

The Bishop of Châlons had a pretty pavilion on the lawn, which I have already described. This prelate was compelled to fly, and his retreat occupied by Jacobins. His property was seized and advertised for sale. Hautoir,[1] as administrator of the district, superintended the business.

While he was announcing the business of the day he was detected with having in his pocket a valuable snuffbox belonging to the Bishop, which he had stolen from the cabinet of the ecclesiastic when placing seals on the property. He was not arrested owing to his position as a Revolutionary delegate, but he was severely hissed at the auction, deprived of his position, and now resides in obscurity at Morli la Ville.

After having taken leave of Touret, who had attended us from morning till night during our three days’ excursions in the immense Forest of Chantilly, which, with its territorial domains, extends to more than one hundred miles in circumference, we drove from a spot where, from the charms of the surrounding country, the serenity of the season and the uncommon attractions of all around us, we had passed the sweetest days of melancholy we had ever experienced.