The Motor Routes of France / To the Châteaux of Touraine, Biarritz, the Pyrenees, the Riviera, & the Rhone Valley

martyrdom,—or, more properly, the murder—of the Maid of Orleans, who saved her country from the English, cannot be forgotten by the visitor to Rouen. There are still houses standing near the cathedral which were there in her day, and were the lodgings of some of her heartless judges; there is still the great pile of Notre Dame, standing much as it stood in her day, although the later Flamboyant work, including the Tour de Beurre, had not then appeared; and there still remains one solitary tower of the castle of Rouen in which Jeanne was confined. The tower was never her prison, but in the ground floor she was intimidated by being shown instruments of torture. The visitor can enter this chamber, which was the scene of that callous brutality to a most innocent maiden, who, encouraged by her implicit belief in the vision of her saints, bore herself throughout with a fortitude and heroism which baffled and enraged her inquisitors.

It is a pity that the tower has been over-restored, and that the walls are hung with wreaths of artificial flowers. There is also a statue of the maid and many prints hung on the walls, but their interest is not commensurate with the subtraction from the grimness of the tower which they cause.

When Jeanne d’Arc was finally condemned to be burnt, the stake was set up in the Vieux-Marché, and the exact spot is now marked by a large stone, bearing the inscription, ‘Jeanne d’Arc, 30 Mai, 1431.’ The heroic girl was taken to the spot in a car with a confessor and others, and escorted by English soldiers. With the awful piles of faggots ready for kindling, the girl’s agony was dragged out with a sermon, and after her sentence was read there is no wonder that she wept bitterly. To Bishop Cauchon, whose heart must have been of flint, she said, while they set the wood on fire: ‘It is you who have brought me to this death.’ A Dominican priest who stood near gives the following account of her death:

Another witness—Maître Jean Massieu, a priest—says:

The Palais de Justice (small gratuity to the concierge) is in the Rue Jeanne d’Arc, with the main front facing the Rue aux Juifs. The central portion dates from 1499 to 1515, and was designed by Le Roux, who was also the brilliant architect of the western portal of the cathedral and the tomb of the Cardinals d’Amboise. The interior is rather disappointing. The great hall, formerly used for the Parliament or Échiquier of Normandy, is now a criminal court, and its panelled and gilded oak ceiling is flat and ineffective in spite of its pendent bosses. The fine Salle des Pas-Perdus in the west wing has a gallery at each end and the marble table of the tribunal.

The Rue de la Grosse Horloge contains a picturesque sixteenth-century archway, bearing a great blue and gold clock, and alongside it is the belfry, commenced in 1389. The visitor who cares for vivid impressions of the past should stroll through this street at 9 p.m., and hear the great bell La Rouvel ring the curfew, raising as it does so the same mellowed tones that have vibrated the air since the Middle Ages.

LEAVING ROUEN

The memory of those sounds is a precious one, and on the next morning, when the car carries one away, it remains among the many things in the mind that are not left behind.

Keeping to the north bank of the Seine, and going to the right at the fork which almost immediately presents itself, one shakes off the cobble-stones in a mile or so, and, after the modern river-side village of Amfreville, the open country is freed from the suburban growth of Rouen. Across the level green fields appear the cotton and cloth mills which are the chief industry of the neighbourhood, and in the distance on the right across the river’s windings can be seen the manufacturing town of Elbeuf. The freedom from smoke of this and the average French industrial town is most striking to the Englishman.

Two kilometres beyond the hamlet of St. Crespin one turns sharply to the left, and, climbing an easy gradient among low woods, comes to the village of Igoville, where one turns to the left again; and, a kilometre farther on, goes to the right, crossing the railway and a long modern bridge over the Seine, which brings one to the old town of

PONT DE L’ARCHE

It is picturesquely situated above the river, which is studded with islands in this portion of its course, and the remains of the ramparts are visible on the river-side, with the towerless Church of Notre Dame des Arts rising above old roofs. There are some old timber-fronted houses, and one of them has a thirteenth-century wooden-pillared porch.

Charles the Bald (died 877), a grandson of Charlemagne, had a palace at Pont de l’Arche, and the little town was one of the first to open its gates to Henry of Navarre when he became Henri IV. in 1589, after the murder of the Duke of Guise. Being one of the gates of Normandy, it suffered several sieges; the old bridge, however, survived up to 1850.

The church was chiefly built in the fifteenth century, and, though unfinished, justifies its unique dedication in the wealth of beautiful carving that adorns the exterior. The chapels ranged along the sides of the nave have curious little conical roofs, which, in the absence of any tower, form the main outline of the building. The interior is very light, in spite of the fifteenth and sixteenth century glass that fills several of the windows. One of them in the north aisle is noticeable for the curious little portraits inserted at a later date. Henri IV., it is said, gave the church its organ, and Jean Gougon is associated with the carving of the font. The choir-stalls come from the neighbouring abbey of Bon-port.

At a fork on leaving the town the road to Louviers goes to the left, and rises straight uphill through the forest of Pont de l’Arche. Succeeding this comes a curious stretch of switchback road, with a blue horizon beyond, and soon afterwards one is bumping on the cobble-stones of

LOUVIERS

Standing at a fork in the middle of the town is the Church of Notre Dame, whose outline is marred by an uncompleted tower, but whose profusion of the most elaborate fifteenth-century carving leaves the wondering spectator almost breathless. The writer once, several years ago, commenced a drawing of the south aisle and porch, but it remains to-day as unfinished as the tower just mentioned! All the lacework carving is on the most obvious side of the church, and is an addition of the Flamboyant period. Its extraordinary wealth of detail repays the closest scrutiny, for among canopied niches and flame-patterned parapets are the grotesque heads of gargoyles and representations of such creatures as the monkey and the bat. The north side of the church shows the greatest contrast imaginable to all this delicate beauty. It is plain and bare thirteenth-century work, with the fortified tower built about the year 1366, a few years after the town had been half destroyed by the English, when the citizens set to work to fortify their town, which hitherto had relied for protection solely on the fact that Louviers was a possession of the Archbishop of Rouen. The thirteenth-century interior, with its double aisles, giving wonderful perspectives of pillars, is one of the most remarkable in Normandy. Gisors (see Section XXVII.) also has double aisles, but their loftiness gives an entirely different effect to those at Louviers. The dark brown pulpit has its sounding-board supported by a couple of carved wooden palm-trees. Some picturesque old houses remain in the old part of the town near the church, and although the town is given up to a considerable extent to woolen factories, it is still a pleasant place, surrounded by the beautiful pastoral scenery of the River Eure.

A terrible incident of the Hundred Years’ War took place in 1418, when Louviers fell into the hands of the English, in spite of its newly built wall, and 120 of its most wealthy merchants were condemned to death. In 1431, in spite of an heroic defence, the English again entered the town, and burnt and destroyed so heartlessly that it is a wonder that the town ever recovered, and yet in the last years of the same century the amazing mass of ornament was added to the south side of the church.

THE ROAD TO EVREUX

Continuing through the main street of Louviers in a straight line past the church, the road runs by the side of the River Eure, with wooded hills on the right. A picturesque half-timbered château, with pepper-box turrets, is passed on the left, and

old church lying a little way from the road on the same side.

The Iton, a tributary of the Eure, is then crossed, and with a beautiful view of steep hills dropping down to the strip of water-meadows by the Eure, the road to Evreux climbs up steadily, making a big bend as it passes through a strip of woodland. The road swings to the right to make a zigzag down into the valley of the Iton, where in descending one has beautiful views of the curving, delicately tinted hills, and a distant glimpse of Evreux, which is entered through a fine avenue.

SECTION III

EVREUX TO CHARTRES, 47¾ MILES
(77 KILOMETRES)

Evreux is a cathedral town, with comparatively wide, but very unassuming, streets of old houses, having their original charm generally hidden under a covering of plaster. Cavalrymen, with horsehair falling from their helmets, and the numerous clergy seem to make up a considerable proportion of the population. In walking through the town one frequently comes to little canals, which take the water of the River Iton in several directions, in a similar fashion to the Stour at Canterbury.

The spacious square in front of the Hôtel de Ville is overlooked by public buildings, whose new appearance might give one a wrong impression of the antiquity of the town, if it were not for the beautiful belfry tower, with a pinnacled spire, standing in one corner. It was built in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and the bell, whose notes are frequently heard, was cast in 1406, and is nearly a century older than the tower, which was built in place of an earlier one. The Museum, in the same square, is interesting, on account of the Roman remains it contains, found at the village of Vieil-Evreux, a Roman site about four and a half miles to the west.

From the museum a short street, the Rue de l’Horloge, leads to the Cathedral, whose lately restored spire appears above the roofs from nearly every point of view. From the eleventh right down to the nineteenth century rebuilding or alterations have been taking place on the great church, and now, to the architect, as well as those who are interested in the history of France, there are the records in stone of the changes which those eight centuries have witnessed.

The first Norman cathedral was burnt, in 1119, by Henry I. of England, who rebuilt the nave about twenty-six years later. During the fighting in Normandy in the time of Philippe Auguste the church again suffered, and the triforium of the nave was rebuilt about the middle of the thirteenth century. The present choir followed at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The following summary covers the chief periods of the cathedral:

The west front is unique in being the only completely classic façade among all the cathedrals of France. It almost gives the feeling of the François I. châteaux by the Loire. The interior is a most inspiring example of pure French Gothic. In the chapels are several windows containing beautiful stained glass of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; that in the south transept is sixteenth century.

The Bishop’s Palace, on the south side of the cathedral, can only be seen from the Boulevard Chambaudouin, where its fortified exterior is washed by one of the canals of the Iton. It is an interesting building of the fifteenth century, and in 1603 was, for a time, the residence of Henri IV., whose famous victory at Ivry, a few miles south of Evreux, is described at the end of this chapter.

At the end of the Rue Joséphine is the Church of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Taurin. The life-story of that otherwise obscure worthy of the Church is told in the windows of the choir, and one of them shows his successful attack on the devil, who had entered the temple of Diana in Evreux. The sacristan will show the casket containing relics of the saint (small gratuity) to those who ask permission. It is worth while to do so, as this silver-gilt reliquary is one of the most sumptuous examples in existence of goldsmiths’ work of the thirteenth century.

The choir, the tower, and part of the nave of St. Taurin belong to the fifteenth century, and the other portions are Romanesque work of the eleventh century. Evreux suffered the most terrible buffets in the unsettled period when Normandy was the battle-ground of England and France. Henry I. burnt the town and John sold it to Philippe Auguste, regaining it treacherously after the release of Richard I. Philippe, however, having captured it, massacred a large proportion of the miserable townsfolk.

It is generally believed that the Devereux family obtained their name from this Norman town.

The road to Chartres goes southwards from Evreux over the hedgeless plain of St. André in a perfectly straight line. The hamlet of Thomer, with its little church with a spiky spire on the left, is passed through, and here and there another village is seen across the fields; but otherwise, for some eighteen miles the great plain stretches away to a flat horizon, with so few features that one marvels how a peasant can find his way to the particular field he was working in on the previous day. There are no hedges, no roadside cottages, and scarcely a tree to serve as a guide to any particular square of the great patchwork of green and brown!

NONANCOURT

On reaching this old town one goes over a level-crossing, and, turning to the left, goes through the street, getting a passing glimpse of the market-house standing on wooden posts. Henry I. chose this place to build a castle for the defence of Normandy, and in it an agreement was signed between Richard I. and Philippe Auguste, by which those two kingly warriors promised not to molest one another’s dominions while absent on the Crusades. Here also they arranged their respective shares in the Third Crusade.

On leaving Nonancourt the River Avre is

crossed, and about nine miles farther one reaches the interesting town of

DREUX

The most conspicuous feature is the Hôtel de Ville, a large square tower-like building, with slightly projecting circular turrets at each corner. It was built between 1512 and 1537, and is a most interesting example of the transition from Flamboyant Gothic to Classic forms. The tall conical roof is broken with dormers, and ends in a bell-turret. Inside there is a beautiful staircase, a Renaissance fireplace, several fine rooms, a library, and old armour.

Built on the steep hill that dominates the town on the north side, where the ruins of the keep and towers of the Castle dismantled in 1593 still stand, is the Chapelle Royale, erected in 1816 by the Duchesse d’Orléans. After suffering imprisonment and banishment during the Revolution, she returned to France in 1814, and resided at Ivry, a few miles to the north of Dreux. The tombs of her father and the Princes of her family in the vaults of the old collegiate church at Dreux had been broken open during the Revolution, but certain pious folk having hidden the bones, the Duchess decided to build a chapel in which they could be preserved. It was completed in 1820, and her son Louis Philippe afterwards built a larger structure. Lenotre describes how Louis refused to have any assistance in the work of sorting up the confused heap of the bones of his ancestors. ‘These poor dead people,’ he said, ‘have already been sufficiently tormented. Leave me alone with them’; and, shut up by himself for a great part of a night, he laid out the bones on cloths, measuring, examining, and sorting them by the light of a lamp.

The tombs include those of the Duchesse d’Orléans, the foundress of the chapel, of Louis Philippe and his queen and their young children, and the Duchesse de Bourbon Condé, mother of the unfortunate Duc d’Enghien.

The Church of St. Pierre, with its odd-looking unfinished towers, has a somewhat severe interior, relieved by the beauty of its sixteenth-century glass. The nave is fifteenth century and the choir and transepts twelfth or thirteenth. A holy-water basin, or bénitier, of the twelfth century is of great interest, and so is the chapel on the south side of the nave, containing wall-paintings of the inhabitants of the town who made the pilgrimage of St. James of Compostella (Santiago in Spain) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The beautiful ambulatory has graceful pillars without capitals, and the sounding-board of the pulpit rests on palm-tree supports, as at Louviers.

During the Huguenot war Dreux and its neighbourhood was involved in heavy fighting. In 1562 the first pitched battle was fought near the town, the Catholic Leaguers being led by Montmorency and François, Duc de Guise, and the Protestants by Coligny and Condé. Although the Catholics were successful, it was a closely fought battle, in which 4,000 perished, and both Montmorency and Condé were taken prisoners.

When Henry of Navarre had become Henri IV., although still only recognized as King by a few of the provinces of France, he laid siege to Dreux in 1590, but retired a few miles northwards to Ivry, in the plain of St. André, on the approach of the Catholic army under Mayenne, numbering about 16,000. ‘My friends,’ said Henri, as he fastened on his helmet, ‘yonder is the enemy; here is your King; and God is on our side. If you should lose your standards, rally round my white plume: you will always find it in the path of honour and of victory!’ The fight began at ten in the morning, and in two hours the army of Mayenne was in full flight.

THE ROAD TO CHARTRES

Outside the town the journey across the great agricultural plain is continued. There are still no hedges between the strips of green and brown, sometimes broken by distant belts of woodland, going away to the soft blue horizons in heaving undulations. The first village passed is Marville-Moutier-Brûlé. One can see the high-pitched green roof and small spire of its eleventh-century church on the left.

Le Boullay Mivoye, the next village, which also has a little twelfth to fifteenth century church, consists of a very compact collection of uniformly low thatched or green-tiled cottages and barns, practically surrounded by a wall, beyond which there is no sign of any habitation until the next village is in sight.

Speeding southwards there appears right ahead on the horizon, at the end of a very straight perspective of road, an enormous building with two spires. There is nothing else in sight beyond a few low trees, and the stranger at once realizes that he is approaching a building of the greatest consequence. It is the vast Gothic cathedral of Chartres.

On entering the town, by going to the right along the Rue de la Couronne, one reaches the Place des Epars, where the hotels are situated. (See town plan of Chartres on p. 67.)

SECTION IV

CHARTRES TO ORLEANS, 45¼ MILES
(73 KILOMETRES)

CHARTRES

In approaching the city across the plain from Dreux the huge bulk of the cathedral alone broke the monotonous horizon, and when one is inside the moat and fragmentary ramparts, the vast Gothic church remains the paramount interest. In its fabric is the story of Chartres, and apart from the cathedral there is little to tell of the town’s genesis.

The Cathedral began as a little church built over a grotto where the early missionaries from Rome had discovered a statue of the Virgin. It was venerated under the name Notre Dame-de-Sous-Terre. Quirinus, the Roman Governor of the town, then called Autricum, in the time of the Emperor Claudius put a number of the Early Christians to the sword, and had their bodies thrown into a well called the Puits de Saints Forts. This interesting link with Gallo-Roman Chartres was lost in the seventeenth century, and was only rediscovered in 1901. It can be seen in the crypt behind the altar of the Virgin.

This Crypt is the largest in France, and, next to St. Peter’s at Rome and Canterbury Cathedral, it is the largest in the world.

Second Church. Burnt by Normans in the ninth century.

Third or Fourth Church:

The Interior is memorable for its immensity and for the strange and almost crude crimsons and blues of the twelfth and thirteenth century glass. The three twelfth-century windows are below the rose of the western end of the nave, where they survived the fire of 1194 almost by a miracle. Several of the windows were given by the trades of Chartres, from the armourers to the pastry-cooks.

By many Chartres is considered the finest cathedral in France, and although there will occur to the mind the glories of the choir of Beauvais and of the nave of Amiens, the interior of Chartres, in its reposeful vastness and strength as a complete structure built in one period, leaves all rivals far behind.

The Ambulatory Screen is the most sumptuous piece of Renaissance carving in France. It was begun in 1514 by Jean de Beauce, and completed

in the eighteenth century. The lives of Christ and of the Virgin are illustrated in the series of pictures in stone.

The Assumption of the Virgin, of Carrara marble, carefully selected by Bridan the sculptor, was finished in 1773. At the Revolution it was saved by an architect, who put a red cap of liberty on the head of the Virgin and a lance in her hand.

The Vierge-du-Pilier is a figure of wood, painted and gilded, with an almost black face. It stands on a short pillar, and is especially venerated by women, being a link with very early and primitive forms of worship.

The Chapelle St. Piat was built in 1349 at the east end and separate from the cathedral. A staircase and passage lead to it.

The Labyrinth of blue-and-white stone in the floor of the nave is a rare and interesting feature, and one of the best in existence. It is not properly known in what way these mazes were used, nor the rites connected with them, although it has been stated that instead of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a penitent could perform the 600-feet journey of the maze on his knees.

The Treasury contains, in a modern reliquary, two pieces of white silk, regarded as part of the tunic or veil of the Virgin, which had been given to Charlemagne by the Empress Irene, and was afterwards presented to Chartres by Charles the Bald.

THE LESSER CHURCHES OF CHARTRES

St. Pierre or St. Père-en-Vallée. The abbey church of St. Père-en-Vallée, founded by Clovis, is a fine building dating from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. It was commenced in 1150, under the direction of the monk Hilduard, and almost entirely rebuilt in the thirteenth century. Of the earlier construction there remains the lower part of the choir, with its heavy pillars, the aisles which surround the choir, and the chapels. The great square tower has been placed as early as 940, but may have been built a century later. The stained glass belongs to the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, the earliest being in the choir excluding the apse. In the south aisle of the nave is the tombstone (1037) of Robert, Archbishop of Rouen, son of Richard I., Duke of Normandy. Unique enamels of the twelve Apostles can be seen in the apsidal chapel.

St. Aignan is mainly a Renaissance church, with the chief entrance built in the fourteenth century. The windows are the most interesting feature.

St. Martin-au-Val is the church of the ancient priory of the abbey of Marmontier, and to-day the chapel of the Hôpital St. Brice—a curious building of the twelfth century, incorporating some remains of a great basilica previous to the tenth century. The crypt contains some Roman capitals of marble, stone sarcophagi, and the tomb of a Bishop of Chartres.

St. André, an interesting ruined collegiate church, now a shop, built, about 1108, over two square crypts belonging to Early Christian times. There is a beautiful Romanesque door.

St. Foi is chiefly a Flamboyant church. It was desecrated with great profanity in the Revolution, and remained secular until it was reconsecrated in 1862.

The Hôtel de Ville is a Renaissance building, formerly the Hôtel Montescot (1614). It contains the Museum of pictures, objects of art, ancient armour and tapestry, and also the Library.

The Bishop’s Palace is a seventeenth-century building.

Maison de Loëns, built over a thirteenth-century crypt.

Maison du Médecin, at No 8, Rue du Grand Cerf, is a beautiful specimen of Renaissance, with an inscription above the door, showing that it was built by Claude Huvé, who was a doctor (1501-1559).

Maison du Saumon, at No. 10, Place de la Poissonnerie, was built in the fifteenth century, and is the most curious construction of wood in Chartres. A big salmon is carved on one of its beams.

The House of the Old Consuls, in the Rue des Écuyers, is interesting as the cradle of the city’s municipal power, and in possessing a most picturesque outside staircase turret (sixteenth century), now called the ‘Escalier de la Reine-Berthe.’

Many other houses belonging to the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods refresh the eye in walking through the streets of Chartres.

The Porte Guillaume is the only survivor of the seven gates that formerly existed. It is flanked by two cylindrical towers of the fourteenth century, with restored machicolated battlements.

In going round the tree-shaded boulevards which mark the limits of the medieval city several sections of the ramparts can be seen, as well as a most attractive view of the cathedral over the river.

ON LEAVING CHARTRES,

on the road to Orleans, almost immediately after passing a direction board, there is a fork, where one goes to the right, with the railway parallel with the road for a few kilometres.

The huge wheat-growing plain of La Beauce—the granary of France—stretches away to a perfectly level horizon in all directions.

Windmills are passed now and then, and distant villages can be seen, but more memorable than anything else is the great dome of sky, and as the car slips rapidly and smoothly along the white ribbon that cuts the scenery in two, one seems to be in the strangest of solitudes and on the very outermost surface of the globe, where every mood of the heavens is felt to its fullest without any mitigating influences. When it rains every drop falls without hindrance, and smites the face with a sting when driven by the untempered wind, and when the sun shines every ray reaches the soil.

Allonnes is a roadside village roofed with thatch, coated with green velvet moss, and having blind stone gables towards the road.

Two level-crossings succeed, and then Ymonville, another stone village with great farmyards and a megalithic stone, is passed.

At Allaines there is a church belonging in part to the eleventh century, and strips of low plantations begin to appear.

It is noticeable that French advertisers use the corners of houses in the wayside villages for announcing their productions in blue and white, just where one looks for the blue-and-white direction-boards, so that the eye never fails to catch them, and the various makes of cocoa or pneumatic tyres are engraved on the memory!

Soon after passing a grey-green boarded windmill close to the road, which makes a very pretty picture against the emerald of the growing corn beyond, the road goes to the left, and immediately afterwards to the right in the village of Artenay.

Soon afterwards a railway appears on the left, and with thin, rickety telegraph-poles as companions, the rest of the way to Orleans begins to lose interest, until a long, dull street shuts out the views.

ORLEANS

Like many cities boasting a history that goes back to a remote period, Orleans has rebuilt itself so often that it is now a modern town, with only a very few buildings to connect it with the past. All the atmosphere of antiquity pervading such cities as Rouen and Chartres has gone to such an extent that it is with a mental effort equal to that of replacing the hippopotamus in the primeval marshes of the Thames, where London now stands, that one remembers that the Gallic town of Cenabum which stood on the site of Orleans was taken by Julius

Cæsar from the Carnutes in 52 B.C. By the third century the town was known as Aurelianus, from which it is an easy step to the present name. In 451 the devastating Huns under Attila were forced back. By 613 Orleans had become one of the most important cities in France, second only to Paris; it was frequently the residence of French kings, and money was minted there.

In 1344 Philippe de Valois separated Orleans from the crown, and it became a duchy, and in the next century (1429) came that historic siege by the English, raised by the ‘Maid,’ who, clad in white armour, rode fearlessly at the head of the French army, and sent a cold terror into the hearts of the English.

After having been occupied by Leaguers and Huguenots in turn, Henri IV. took the city in 1594. The year of Waterloo saw the Prussians in Orleans, and in 1870 they again occupied the city. They were driven out for a time, but after returning they did not evacuate until March, 1871.

The Cathedral has its eighteenth-century ‘Gothic’ west front facing the wide Rue Jeanne d’Arc. It is a most abominable conception of narrow pointed doorways of a Moorish character, with ogee arches and the oddest pair of towers. The thirteenth-century east end, with its great display of flying buttresses, is the chief portion of the earlier cathedral burnt by the Calvinists in 1567.

Building Dates