Read Ebook: Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers by Winks W E William Edward

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Ebook has 918 lines and 112087 words, and 19 pages

INDEX 325

PAGE

GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITS COVERED BY x

CHATEAU AND GARDENS OF ANCY-LE-FRANC 94

MONOGRAMS FROM THE CHAMBRE DES FLEURS 98

BURGUNDY THROUGH THE AGES 101

KEY OF VAULTING, DIJON 113

CUISINES AT DIJON 119

CLOS VOUGEOT.--CHAMBERTIN 137

CHATEAU DE NOBLE 169

THE LION OF BELFORT 195

TOWER OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE, GRENOBLE 219

PORTAL ST. DOMINIQUE, CHAMB?RY 231

LES CHARMETTES 235

LA TOUR SANS VENIN 255

MONTMELIAN 280

SEAL OF THE NATIVE DAUPHINS 290

BRIAN?ON; ITS CHATEAU AND OLD FORTIFIED BRIDGE 305

Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy

and the Border Provinces

THE REALM OF THE BURGUNDIANS

The Burgundy of Charlemagne's time was a much vaster extent of territory than that of the period when the province came to play its own kingly part. From the borders of Neustria to Lombardia and Provence it extended from the northwest to the southeast, and from Austrasia and Alamannia in the northeast to Aquitania and Septimania in the southwest. In other words, it embraced practically the entire watershed of the Rh?ne and even included the upper reaches of the Yonne and Seine and a very large portion of the Loire; in short, all of the great central plain lying between the Alps and the Cevennes.

The old Burgundian province was closely allied topographically, climatically and by ties of family, with many of its neighbouring political divisions. Almost to the Ile de France this extended on the north; to the east, the Franche Comt? was but a dismemberment; whilst the Nivernais and the Bourbonnais to the west, through the lands and influence of their seigneurs, encroached more or less on Burgundy or vice versa if one chooses to think of it in that way. To the southeast Dombes, Bresse and Bugey, all closely allied with one another, bridged the leagues which separated Burgundy from Savoy, and, still farther on, Dauphiny.

The influence of the Burgundian spirit was, however, over all. The neighbouring states, the nobility and the people alike, envied and emulated, as far as they were able, the luxurious life of the Burgundian seigneurs later. If at one time or another they were actually enemies, they sooner, in many instances at least, allied themselves as friends or partisans, and the manner of life of the Burgundians of the middle ages became their own.

Not in the royal domain of France itself, not in luxurious Touraine, was there more love of splendour and the gorgeous trappings of the ceremonial of the middle ages than in Burgundy. It has ever been a land of prosperity and plenty, to which, in these late days, must be added peace, for there is no region in all France of to-day where there is more contentment and comfort than in the wealthy and opulent Departments of the C?te d'Or and the Sa?ne and Loire which, since the Revolution, have been carved out of the very heart of old Burgundy.

sang the author of the libretto of "Diamants de la Couronne," and he certainly expressed the sentiment well.

The Parisians themselves know and love Burgundy perhaps more than any other of the old mediaeval provinces; that is, they seemingly love it for itself; such minor contempt as they have for a Proven?al, a Norman or a Breton does not exist with regard to a Bourguignon.

Said Michelet: "Burgundy is a country where all are possessed of a pompous and solemn eloquence." This is a tribute to its men. And he continued: "It is a country of good livers and joyous seasons"--and this is an encomium of its bounty.

In the arts, too, Burgundy has played its own special part, and if the chateau-builder did not here run riot as luxuriously as in Touraine, he at least builded well and left innumerable examples behind which will please the lover of historic shrines no less than the more florid Renaissance of the Loire.

The ways and means of travel in Burgundy have considerably changed in the last two hundred years, but the old-time flavour of the road still hangs over all, and the traveller down through Burgundy to-day, especially if he goes by road, may experience not a little of the charm which has all but disappeared from modern France and its interminably straight, level, tree-lined highways. Often enough one may stop at some old posting inn famous in history and, as he wheels his way along, will see the same historic monuments, magnificent churches and chateaux as did that prolific letter writer, Madame de S?vign?.

Evelyn, the diarist , thought much the same thing and so recorded his opinion.

La Fontaine was a most conscientious traveller and said some grand things of the Renaissance chateaux-builders of which literary history has neglected to make mention.

Lippomano, the Venetian Ambassador of the sixteenth century, professed to have met with a population uncivil and wanting in probity, but he exalted, nevertheless, to the highest the admirable chateaux of princes and seigneurs which he saw on the way through Burgundy. Zinzerling, a young German traveller, in the year 1616, remarked much the same thing, but regretted that a certain class of sight-seers was even then wont to scribble names in public places. We of to-day who love old monuments have, then, no more reason to complain than had this observant traveller of three hundred years ago.

Great churches, abbeys, monasteries, fortresses, chateaux, donjons and barbican gates are hardly less frequently seen in France to-day than they were of old, although in many instances a ruin only exists to tell the tale of former splendour.

This is as true of Burgundy as it is of other parts of France; indeed, it is, perhaps, a more apt reference here than it would be with regard to Normandy or Picardy, where many a mediaeval civic or religious shrine has been made into a warehouse or a beet-sugar factory. The closest comparison of this nature that one can make with respect to these parts is that some Cistercian monastery has become a "wine-chateau" like the Clos Vougeot or Beaune's Hospice or Hotel Dieu, which, in truth, at certain periods, is nothing more nor less than a great wholesale wine-shop.

Any review of the castle, chateau and palace architecture of France, and of the historic incident and the personages connected therewith, is bound to divide itself into a geographical or climatic category. To begin with the manner of building of the southland was only transplanted in northern soil experimentally, and it did not always take root so vigorously that it was able to live.

The Renaissance glories of Touraine and the valley of the Loire, though the outcome of various Italian pilgrimages, were of a more florid and whimsical fashioning than anything in Italy itself, either at the period of their inception or even later, and so they are to be considered as something distinctly French,--indeed, it was their very influence which was to radiate all over the chateau-building world of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In Burgundy and the Bourbonnais, and to some extent in the Nivernais, there grew up a distinct method of castle-building which was only allied with the many other varieties scattered over France in the sense that the fabrics were intended to serve the same purposes as their contemporaries elsewhere. The solid square shafts flanking a barbican gate,--the same general effect observable of all fortified towns,--the profuse use of heavy Renaissance sculpture in town houses, the interpolated Flemish-Gothic , and above all, the Burgundian school of sculptured figures and figurines were details which flowered hereabouts as they did nowhere else.

So far as the actual numbers of the edifices go it is evident that throughout Burgundy ecclesiastical architecture developed at the expense of the more luxuriously endowed civic and domestic varieties of Touraine, which, we can not deny, must ever be considered the real "chateaux country." In Touraine the splendour of ecclesiastical building took a second place to that of the domestic dwelling, or country or town house.

For the most part, the Romanesque domestic edifice has disappeared throughout Burgundy. Only at Cluny are there any very considerable remains of the domestic architecture of the Romans, and even here there is nothing very substantial, no tangible reminder of the palace of emperor or consul, only some fragments of more or less extensive edifices which were built by the art which the Romans brought with them from beyond the Alps when they overran Gaul. If one knows how to read the signs, there may still be seen at Cluny fragments of old Roman walls of stone, brick, and even of wood, and the fact that they have already stood for ten or a dozen centuries speaks much for the excellence of their building. It was undoubtedly something just a bit better than the modern way of doing things.

Of all the domestic edifices of Burgundy dating from the thirteenth century or earlier, that enclosing the "cuisines" of the old palace of the dukes at Dijon is credited by all authorities as being quite the most remarkable, indeed, the most typical, of its environment. After this comes the Salle Synodale at Sens. These two, showing the civic and domestic details of the purely Burgundian manner of building, represent their epoch at its very best.

In Dauphiny and Savoy, and to a certain extent the indeterminate ground of Bresse, Dombes and Bugey which linked Burgundy therewith, military and civic architecture in the middle ages took on slightly different forms. Nevertheless, the style was more nearly allied to that obtaining in mid-France than to that of the Midi, or to anything specifically Italian in motive, although Savoy was for ages connected by liens of blood with the holder of the Italian crown.

It was only in 1792 that Savoy became a French D?partement, with the rather unsatisfactory nomenclature of Mont Blanc. It is true, however, that by holding to the name of Mont Blanc the new department would at least have impressed itself upon the travelling public, as well as the fact that the peak is really French. As it is, it is commonly thought to be Swiss, though for a fact it is leagues from the Swiss frontier.

Before a score of years had passed Savoy again became subject to an Italian prince. Less than half a century later "La Savoie" became a pearl in the French diadem for all time, forming the D?partements of Haute Savoie and Savoie of to-day.

The rectangular fortress-like chateau--indeed more a fortress than a chateau--was more often found in the plains than in the mountains. It is for this reason that the chateaux of the Alpine valleys and hillsides of Savoy and Dauphiny differ from those of the Rh?ne or the Sa?ne. The Rhine castle of our imaginations may well stand for one type; the other is best represented by the great parallelogram of Aigues-Mortes, or better yet by the walls and towers of the Cit? at Carcassonne.

Feudal chateaux up to the thirteenth century were almost always constructed upon an eminence; it was only with the beginning of this epoch that the seigneurs dared to build a country house without the protection of natural bulwarks.

The two types are represented in this book, those of the plain and those of the mountain, though it is to be remembered that it is the specific castle-like edifice, and not the purely residential chateau that often exists in the mountainous regions to the exclusion of the other variety. After that comes the ornate country house, in many cases lacking utterly the defences which were the invariable attribute of the castle. Miolans and Montmelian in Savoy stand for examples of the first mentioned class; Chastellux, Ancy-le-Franc and Tanlay in Burgundy for the second.

To sum up the chateau architecture, and, to be comprehensive, all mediaeval and Renaissance architecture in France, we may say that it stands as something distinctly national, something that has absorbed much of the best of other lands but which has been fused with the ingenious daring of the Gaul into a style which later went abroad to all nations of the globe as something distinctly French. It matters little whether proof of this be sought in Touraine, Burgundy or Poitou, for while each may possess their eccentricities of style, and excellencies as varied as their climates, all are to-day distinctly French, and must be so considered from their inception.

Among these master works which go to give glory and renown to French architecture are not only the formidable castles and luxurious chateaux of kings and princes but also the great civic palaces and military works of contemporary epochs, for these, in many instances, combined the functions of a royal dwelling with their other condition.

IN THE VALLEY OF THE YONNE

There is no more charming river valley in all France than that of the Yonne, which wanders from mid-Burgundy down to join the Seine just above Fontainebleau and the artists' haunts of Moret and Montigny.

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