Although the history of Burgundy is intimately connected with that of England—the policy of the Valois Dukes, for example, affected profoundly our national destinies during the hundred years' war—the average English reader's knowledge of the subject is contained within the four corners of a wine list. He knows Beaune—knows the name well, as that of a drinkable brand, may have blessed it in his heart, when a ray from the shaded lamp shot through its ruby depths. If by any chance he loves Meredith, he may, even, under its kindly influence, have whispered to his fair partner, Dr. Middleton's phrase: "Burgundy has great genius; Burgundy sings the inspired ode." But should his lady slip in a question concerning this ruddy heartener of man, he could not answer; he would stumble between the CÔte d'Azur and the CÔte d'Or.

Not another town of Burgundy could he name. Dijon he knows, and remembers; because there he scalded his throat with hot coffee, gulped down, at three in the morning, on the way home from the Riviera; or, bound for Switzerland, he may have passed through the town. But he does not know Dijon as a Burgundian Capital, nor as a proud city of royal palaces and unrivalled sculpture. At most, when he hears the duchy named, there floats through his mind a shadowy memory of Henry V., or of King Lear.[1]

Yet Burgundy was the scene of events vital in the making of Europe. It was one of the strongholds of Roman civilization. It saw the genesis of a religious movement that was the greatest feature of eleventh and twelfth century history. Cluny was a nursery of popes; Citeaux became a breeding ground of saints; their abbots lorded it over mighty kings; they dictated to potentates and princes; they bent all western Europe beneath their sway. Bernard's eloquence fired three nations with enthusiasm for the second crusade.

That Power, when it had passed from the great monastic houses, fell later, in a modified form, to the Valois Dukes. Safely housed in Dijon, or in Bruges, ruling a people sheltered, to some extent, from the appalling disasters that were transforming the fair kingdom of France into a howling wilderness, they kept a more than royal state. Gathering about their persons a great company of distinguished artists and valiant knights, they established a school of sculpture unmatched in their time; they held pageants and tournaments the most brilliant that chivalry had ever seen.

Headstrong and ambitious, they challenged the crown of France, and defied it; they dreamed dreams of a Burgundian empire extending eastward beyond the Alps and northward to the Channel.

'Tis true that these ambitions were never sated. The house of Valois had not the constructive mind of which empire is begotten: moreover, Destiny, and Louis XI., were too strong for them. But the glorious tale of ducal efforts towards that goal outshines all other sunset splendours of dying mediÆvalism.

When I think of what might be made of such a theme, I could tear these pages, because my best is not better.

Yet history does not end the attractions of Burgundy. It only begins them. Nature, too, has her pageant "in this best garden of the world," she will hold you here, whether you choose the delicious, poplar-fringed plains of the SaÔne, the "waterish" Burgundy that the French king sneers at in "Lear"—he would have gloried in the land had it been his own—or the stern and silent hills of the Jura and the Morvan; or the vine-clad slopes of sunny CÔte d'Or.

But, best of all, this land and its people have a character wholly their own. You will not feel here the twilight melancholy of Celtic Brittany; the quivering, electric atmosphere of romantic Provence; nor the passionate intensity of dark Languedoc; but you will find a country well typified by its wines, its sculpture, its architecture—a solid, ample, full-bodied, full-blooded land; a people strong and vivacious, concealing, beneath a somewhat harsh and stern exterior, a cheerful heart and an abundant generosity; comfortable, courageous, eloquent, sonorous folk, that love a good dinner, and a good story to follow, that have produced a Bernard, a Bossuet, and a Lamartine.

The key to this Burgundian character, with its blend of Gallic, Latin, and German elements, the key to Burgundian history, too, is the geographical position of the country. Its great water-ways flow northward, by the Yonne, to the English Channel, and southward, by the SaÔne, to the Mediterranean and the traffic of the East; along its valleys run the great trading roads and railways connecting northern and southern, eastern and western Europe. With the exception of the Jura, no natural barriers exist between Burgundy and the adjoining lands. It was open at all quarters; from every point of the compass it borrowed, and it lent. Michelet's visionary thought has summed up, in a splendid phrase, the secret of Burgundy. He says, speaking of the country round Dijon: "La France n'a pas d'ÉlÉment plus liant, plus capable de rÉconcilier le nord et le midi."

There you have it. To reconcile the bitter antagonisms of north and south, and, in a lesser degree, of east and west, was Burgundy's destiny; the geographical position that enabled her to do so was at once the source of her greatness, and the cause of her fall. While she remained independent, unity was impossible for France; and England's peace was imperilled by irresistible temptations to attack a weakened neighbour.

In writing this book, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to preserve historical continuity. That must be my excuse for geographical flights which, else, might bewilder my readers.

My hope is that these pages may awaken, here and there, lasting interest in a land that, whether for varied scenery, sunny climate, good living, characteristic architecture, or, above all, historical associations of the first importance, can hold its own with any other ancient province of France.