DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE

NOTES FOR DRIVERS

PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE

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.)