Part 26

'Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse, And I'll direct thee how thou shall escape By sudden flight. Come, dally not; be gone'?

What more natural, too, than that the son of such a father should have replied in words which, although less rhythmical, would have been in substance these?--

'Is my name Talbot? and am I your son? And shall I fly? The world will say he is not Talbot's blood, That basely fled when noble Talbot stood.'

To the fact that the battle of Castillon was fought in Périgord, although the town is in the Bordelais, we doubtless owe the interesting description that Jean Tarde has left us of the memorable struggle. His narrative, so far as it relates to the incident between Talbot and his son, is in the main the same as Shakespeare's; but being told in the plain prose of a simple annalist, it lacks the rhetorical and romantic embellishments which the British poet thought fit to add. In the following translation of the most interesting part of Tarde's description of the battle, an effort has been made to preserve the style of the writer:

'The English troops entered courageously by the passage where the artillery awaited them, which (passage) alone could give them access to the French army. He who commanded the artillery took his time, and at the first discharge laid low three or four hundred. This massacre, coming unexpectedly, troubled the whole English army, and threw it into disorder, which pained Talbot to see; and fearing the defeat of his men, he told the Sieur de l'Isle, his son, to withdraw and reserve himself for a more fortunate occasion; who replied that he could not retire from the combat in which he saw his father running the risk of his life. To this Talbot rejoined, 'I have in my life given so many proofs of my valour and military virtue, that I cannot die to-day without honour, and I cannot flee without making a breach in the reputation I have acquired by so much labour; but to you, my son, who are bearing here your first arms, flight cannot bring any infamy nor death much glory.' [Footnote: 'J'ay pendant ma vie donné tant de tesmoignages de ma valeur et vertu militaire que je ne puys meshuy mourir sans honneur et ne puys fuir sans fère brèche à la réputation que j'ay acquise par tant de travaux; mais vous mon filz qui portés icy vos premières armes, la fuitte ne vous peut apporter aucune infamie, ny la mort beaucoup de gloire.'] But without giving heed to this counsel, the young lord, full of generous courage, reassured his men, made them fall again into rank, and having ranged them with their bucklers fixed in tortoise fashion, sped on to the attack of his enemies in their camp; for they had not dared to leave their trenches. The French, seeing themselves pressed in this way, entered into the battle. Great was the mêlée. The artillery of the French continued all the while to fire upon the English troops, and so well that a stone striking Talbot broke his thigh. The English seeing their chief on the ground, believing him dead, and recognising that the French were the stronger in artillery and in the number of men, lost courage, fell into disorder, and only thought of saving themselves. The French, on the contrary, took heart and fought with fury. The battle was bloody. Talbot, his son the Sieur de l'Isle, another bastard son, and a son-in-law, were killed with the greater part of the English nobility, and the whole army was cut to pieces. Talbot's body was buried on the spot where it was found, and upon his grave was built a small chapel that still exists, but open to the sky and half ruined.'

Jean Tarde concludes his narrative of the battle with these remarks:

'The English army being thus defeated, Castillon surrendered, and the King in person besieged Bordeaux, which surrendered on October 18. Following its example, all the other towns of Guyenne again submitted to him. Thus ended the domination of the English in Guyenne, of which (province) they were completely dispossessed, and which at once returned to the sceptre and crown of France, after remaining for three hundred years in the claws of the English leopards.'

There are some patent inaccuracies in Tarde's account--the statement, to wit, that Talbot was buried on the spot where he fell, whereas his body was carried from the field and taken to England. The ecclesiastical chronicler must have accepted the story in circulation among the common people, which is repeated to this day by the peasants around Castillon, who even point out a mound which they call 'Talbot's grave.' Shakespeare does not fall into this error, although he brings Jeanne d'Arc upon the battlefield, notwithstanding that she was burnt twenty-two years before the death of Talbot.

According to the version accepted by French historians, Talbot was overthrown by a cannon-shot, and was afterwards despatched on the ground by a soldier who ran his sword through the hero's throat. His body was carried into the French camp, where it remained all night, and it was so disfigured that his herald could hardly recognise it. Many of the fugitives were drowned or were killed by the archers while attempting to swim across the Dordogne. Four thousand English, or English partisans, were said to have been slain on this fatal day, and only a small remnant of the army managed to retreat within the walls of Castillon. The French then besieged the town, and the bombardment was so furious that the garrison was soon willing to surrender on the best terms that could be obtained. Bordeaux was not besieged until St. Émilion, Libourne, Fronsac, Bazas, Cadillac, and other strongholds of the Bordelais had capitulated.

After this rather long journey into the past, I must return to my wayfaring upon the battlefield of Castillon, over which more than four centuries have crept since the events occurred which gave it so dramatic a celebrity.

Scorched by the now blazing sun, I took the shadeless road leading out of the town towards the north-east, and after walking about a mile between vineyards, I came to the commemorative monument of the battle raised in 1888 by the Union Patriotique de France. It is a low obelisk, with no ornament save a mediaeval sword carved upon it, with point turned upwards. Facing the road is the following inscription:

'Dans cette plaine le 17 Juillet, 1453, fut remporté la victoire qui délivra du joug de l'Angleterre les provinces meridionals de la France et termina la guerre de cent ans.'

The abbey where the French archers were surprised and slain must have been near this spot, but it was down in the valley by the Lidoire where Talbot fell. There is no trace of a chapel such as that of which Tarde speaks, nor any other mark to show the place. But the little stream is there as of old, and the beautiful Dordogne that drank the mingled blood of the two armies which its tributary poured into it flows serenely and blue as it did then under the same summer sky.

An Englishman who now wanders over the battlefield of Castillon can hardly realize how his country grieved at the defeat of Talbot far away here amidst the southern vines. To-day it seems so absurd, so contrary to the policy of common-sense, that England, then so thinly populated, should have striven so hard and so long in order to be a Continental power; when now, with her dense population, half subsisting upon foreign supplies, she blesses that accident of nature which caused the bridge of rocks that connected her with the mainland to disappear beneath the sea. Surely if history teaches anything, it teaches the vanity of politics.

From Castillon I bent my course to St. Émilion on the road to Libourne; the Dordogne, which here twists like a snake in agony, being left somewhat to the south. The whole country, hill and plain, was clad with vineyards, but I soon grew weary of looking at the numberless short vines fastened to stakes in one broad blaze of unchanging sunshine. Even the hanging clusters of grapes wearied the eye by endless repetition.

By-and-by, out of all this sameness rose a hill in that abrupt manner which strikes a peculiar character into this southern landscape, and upon the hill were jutting rocks and a broken mass of strangely-jumbled masonry-roofs rising out of roofs, gables crushing gables, feudal towers, great walls, and one tall heaven-pointing spire. This was St. Émilion, respected in the Middle Ages as a strong fortress of the Bordelais, and now so famous for its wine that the locality has long ceased to produce more than an insignificant part of that which is put into bottles bearing the name of a saint who drank nothing stronger than water. Only the wine that is grown upon the sides of the hill is really St. Émilion; it changes as soon as the vineyards reach the plain. It is then a vin de plaine, and is no more like the other than if it had been grown fifty miles away.

Celtic remains point to the conclusion that, long before the foundation of the first monastery, which was the beginning of the mediaeval town, the Gauls had an oppidum on this hill. St. Émilion became a fortified town in the reign of King John, who signed a charter here, and it may be said to have been thoroughly gained over to the English cause by Edward I., who granted numerous privileges to the burghers. For a short time the place fell into the power of Philippe IV., but it was in its collegial church in May, 1303, that the duchy of Aquitaine was ceremoniously restored by the Seneschal of Gascony to the King of England, represented on this occasion by the Earl of Lincoln. To reward the inhabitants for their fidelity, and to compensate them in some sort for the trials which they had endured in consequence, St. Émilion was made a royal English borough, and enjoyed the special favour and protection of the sovereign.

It was in this fourteenth century that it rose to the height of its importance and prosperity. We can gather to-day from the ruins of its religious buildings and fortifications what that importance must have been. Besides the monastery dating from the age of Charlemagne, whose monks early in the twelfth century were placed under the rule of St. Augustin, two great religious establishments were those of the Minor Friars or Cordeliers, and the Preaching Friars or Dominicans. Of the vast convent of these last nothing remains but a very stately and noble fragment of the church wall, standing isolated on the top of the hill.

During the Hundred Years' War St. Émilion was besieged and taken by Du Guesclin; but although the burghers were often compelled to dissemble in order to save their throats, they were always ready to welcome an English army. They were among the first to follow the example of the men of Bordeaux, who raised the English flag for the last time in 1452.

During the religious wars of the sixteenth century St. Émilion suffered grievously from the fury and bestiality of the vile ruffians of both camps. The excesses of the Norman barbarians when they burnt and pillaged the town in the ninth century were mild in comparison with those of the sixteenth-century Christians.

There are few spots more fascinating to the artist and archaeologist than this ruinous old stronghold of the English kings. One might ramble a long time over the cobble stones of its steep narrow streets, and about the ruined ramparts draped with green pellitory and the spurred valerian's purple flowers, with a mind held in continual tension by the picturesque. At every angle there is a fresh surprise. The monolithic church, made by excavating the calcareous rock, which crops out and forms a kind of table near the top of the crescent-shaped hill, is said to have been mainly the work of monks in the ninth century. There is no other resembling it, with the exception of the one at Aubeterre, the idea of which was probably borrowed here. Steps lead down into the nave, where there is an odour of ancient death, and where the light darting through windows pierced in the face of the cliff reveals on each side a row of huge rectangular piers supporting round-headed arches, all forming part of the rock. These separate the nave from the aisles, of which there are three, the one farthest from the centre having been used chiefly for burial. All about are numerous tomb recesses. The piers and their arches are covered with green or black lichen, which adds not a little to the gloom and dismalness of this subterranean church.

Ornamental details of the exterior, such as the doorway with its has-relief of the Last Judgment, are of a much later period than the rude excavations of the interior. From the platform of rock immediately above the vast crypt rise a Gothic tower and spire dating from the twelfth century. This structure, which lends so much character to St. Émilion, appears to belong to the church beneath; but such is not the case. Although separated, it is a part of the collegial, now parish, church, which is higher up the hill, just within the line of the ramparts. It is said to have been built by the English, but the Romanesque lateral doorway would be strong evidence of the contrary if there were no other. English influence, however, may have played some part in the extensive rebuilding which was carried out in the fourteenth century. The east end, scarcely forming an apse, and pierced in the centre with a high broad window with a narrower window on each side, suggests this, as do also the very massive columns of the choir.

Close to the monolithic church is the cavern where the hermit Émilion is supposed to have dwelt. In order to see it, I had to find a little girl who kept the key, and who led the way down the steps with a lighted candle. St. Émilion might have looked far before finding a more unpleasant place to live in than this cavern. It might be safely guaranteed to kill in a very short time any man with a modern constitution, unless he were miraculously preserved from rheumatism and other evils of the flesh. The damp oozes perpetually from the slimy rock, and the air is like that of a well. Indeed, there is a little well here called St. Émilion's Fountain. The spring is intermittent; every two or three minutes the water is seen to rise with one or more bubbles. It never fails, no matter how prolonged the drought may be.

The little girl pointed out to me a great number of pins lying upon the sandy bottom of the basin. I asked her how they came there, and she said that they were dropped into the water by people--chiefly young girls--who wished to know when they would be married. If two pins that had been dropped in together crossed one another upon the bottom, it was a sign that the person who let them fall would be married within a year. As I could distinguish none that were crossed, I concluded that all who had made the experiment here were condemned to celibacy. This form of superstition--doubtless of Celtic origin wherever met with--is much more frequent in Brittany than in Guyenne.

Close to the 'grotto' is an old charnel-house quarried in the rock with a dome-shaped roof, at the top of which is a round hole that lets the light of heaven into the awful pit. This opening formerly served another purpose. There was a cemetery above, and as the bones were turned up from the shallow soil to make room for others still clothed with their flesh, they were thrown down the orifice. For those who did not wish to be disturbed after death, the charnel-house was the securer place of burial. Here, as in the underground church, one sees numerous recesses in the wall which were made for tombs. Those who feel the need of sombre ideas will be as likely to find the incentive to them here as anywhere. Oh, what ghostly places are these old southern towns, with their heaps of ruins, their churches as dim as sepulchres, their crypts and charnel-houses filled with bones!

Fellow-wanderer, come and see with me the convent of the Cordeliers. There are no monks here now. Since the Revolution their habitation has been open to all the winds of heaven, and the shadow of the wild fig-tree falls where that of their own forms once fell as they stood in the stalls of their chapel choir. In the cloisters, the ivy and the pellitory and the little cranesbill have crept with the moss and the lichen from stone to stone, and in the centre of the quadrangle stands a great walnut-tree that spreads its branches and long leaves over all the grassy ground. Birds that cannot be seen sing aloft under the flaming sky; but here in the shadow of the arcades and the dark foliage nothing moves except the snail and the lazy toad at evening amidst the damp weeds. The stones that we see here in this ruined convent bear testimony to the eternal restlessness of man's desire to give some fresh artistic form to his religious aspiration. Some were carved in the Romanesque period, others in the Gothic, others in the Renaissance. Witnesses of the human mind in different ages, all are crumbling and growing green together, sharing a common fate.

Among the many holes and corners full of curious interest at St. Émilion, but which have to be searched for by the visitor, is the cave where during the Reign of Terror seven of the Girondins sought refuge, and where they remained hidden from their persecutors several months, notwithstanding the unflagging efforts made to discover their retreat. Their enemies were convinced that they were somewhere in the town, or, rather, underneath the town, for the rock on which it rests is honeycombed with quarries. These Girondins were Guadet, Salles, Barbaroux, Petlon, Buzot, Louvet, and Valady. Guadet was a native of St. Émilion, and he had a relative there named Madame Bouquey. She and her husband were a brave and noble-minded couple at a time when the craven-hearted--always the accomplices of tyrants--were in the ascendancy everywhere. They sheltered Guadet and his companions in a cave under their garden. The fugitives had first thought of hiding in the old quarries, but they realized that they would be much safer in the cave.

Hearing that the 'Grotte des Girondins' was in the garden of the school, now kept by Christian Brothers, thither I went. A little boy in a long black blouse, with a leather belt round his waist, having obtained the permission, pulled open a trapdoor in the garden, and, candle in hand, led the way down a flight of steps into a cavern, about the same size as St. Émilion's, but much dryer and more comfortable. On one side of it was an opening, which was made perceptible by a very faint glimmer of daylight. I found that this opening was in the side of a well. The water was still far below, and the surface of the earth was about fifteen feet above. The trap-door entrance--so the Brothers assured me--did not exist in the last century, and the only entrance to the cave was by the well. It was, therefore, an admirable hiding-place, for the lateral opening was not distinguishable from above, and anybody looking down and seeing the water at the bottom would have thought it quite unnecessary to search any further there. The Girondins were let down by the rope, or they let themselves down. As time went on, the position of Monsieur and Madame Bouquey, on whom strong suspicion rested, became more and more difficult; and when the fugitives were informed that commissioners were on their way to St. Émilion, they resolved that, rather than expose their benefactors to further peril, they would make an attempt to escape in different directions. Louvet got to Paris, and was the only one of the seven who did not come by a violent death. Guadet and Salles were captured at St. Émilion, and were executed, as a matter of course. Barbaroux was also taken, after making an unsuccessful attempt to blow out his brains, and he, too, was guillotined at Bordeaux. Buzot and Petion stabbed themselves in a field between St. Émilion and Castillon, where their bodies were found half eaten by wolves. The seventh, Valady, was brought to the scaffold at Périgueux. Monsieur and Madame Bouquey met the same fate. And it is with this page of modern history that the quiet little garden of the Brothers' school, its well and hidden cavern, are so tragically associated.