“CHARTRES,” says Mr. Henry James, “gives us an impression of extreme antiquity, but it is an antiquity that has gone down in the world.” It may be this very decadence that has kept Chartres within itself and prevented it from growing out into a large pretentious city. Many other places which rival it in age and association have either swept away all traces of their antiquity, or else preserved it in dignified contrast to the modern mushroom town. Chartres has done neither. It is scarcely more at the present day than a quaint country town with a very old-fashioned air, a place of steep, twisting streets and quiet little market-squares, the cathedral rising like a giant from the very midst of the houses. Round the town runs a boulevard, known as the Tour-de-Ville, and interesting for the fact that it follows the line of the mediÆval defences—ramparts that kept many enemies at bay when Chartres was a power in the kingdom of France. Here and there parts of these defences are still standing, and one fragment in particular forms the foundations of an old convent. Another remnant of the old fighting days is the Porte Guillaume, one of the city gates, built when the march of the English forced every French town to keep itself under bolt and bar. Two round towers, embattled and machicolated, flank a low archway, and to complete the mediÆval effect, the ancient fosse still remains before the gate, not grass-grown or choked with rubbish, but filled with a clear stream, just as it might have been in old days.
CHARTRES FROM THE NORTH
CHARTRES FROM THE NORTH
Autricum of the Carnutes held an important position in Gaul, ranking very near the great capital of the Senones. In pre-Christian times it was a famous Druidic centre; but with the advance of Christianity, Savinian and Potentian, the patron saints of Sens, extended their mission to Chartres, converted the inhabitants, and built their first church, according to tradition, upon a Druid grotto. Later on, the town passed into the possession of a line of counts, who were a very powerful factor in mediÆval France. The first Theobald or Thibaut is said to have purchased his domain from the sea-king Hasting, who had penetrated beyond the coast and colonised the lands around the river Eure. His son and successor, Thibaut le Tricheur, lived in a state of constant war with Normandy, and seems to have been regarded as a kind of evil influence by the old Norman chroniclers, whose hero in Thibaut’s day was naturally their own Richard the Fearless. Another of the line was the famous Odo, whose ambition went beyond his own states of Chartres and Blois, and aimed at kingship in Burgundy and even in Italy. Through the greater part of his reign he carried on also the struggle with Normandy which had raged so fiercely in Thibaut’s time, besides the standing war with the Angevin line, represented by Fulk the Black. It was, as Freeman says, the fact of this common enemy in the house of Chartres which first brought Anjou and Normandy into direct contact and perhaps laid the foundations of Anjou’s subsequent connection with England. Chartres, like Nevers, was made a duchy under FranÇois Ier; later it passed into the OrlÉans family, whose nominal appanage it has remained ever since, the eldest son bearing to this day the title of “Duc de Chartres.” It is also interesting to notice that Henri de Navarre broke the long succession of coronations at Rheims by being crowned King of France in Chartres Cathedral, three years after the town had opened its gates to his army in 1591. Some three hundred years later another enemy appeared outside the walls, and once again Chartres found itself in the hands of a foreign power. Mr. Cecil Headlam, in his very interesting “Story of Chartres,” gives a description of the Prussian occupation, part of which may be quoted here as showing the foresight of the Mayor, who in this terrible time, when the whole French nation seemed utterly demoralised, thought rather of the safeguard of the city and its one great monument, than of the doubtful and dearly-won glory of a protracted defence.“It was on Friday, September 30, 1870, that the Prussian soldiers appeared for the first time near Chartres. Three weeks later ChÂteaudun fell, after a desperate and heroic defence, for which that picturesque and ancient town paid the dear price of failure. Two days later the enemy marched in force upon Chartres. The tirailleurs and mobiles and troops of the National Guard, who endeavoured to defend the town, after vain marching and counter-marching, with the same generous ardour and utter ineffectiveness as had distinguished the movements of the other armies before the disasters of Wissembourg, WÖrth and Sedan, returned exhausted. Without firing a shot they had been rendered incapable of fighting. Fighting in any case would have been useless. It was wisely decided to capitulate, and on the 21st the Mayor and Prefect of the Department drove out to Morancez to save the city and Cathedral, by surrendering them to General von Wittich, from the inevitable destruction of which ChÂteaudun had given them a terrible example. What they saw on their way of the French defence and the Prussian advance convinced civilians and military men alike that it was impossible to hope to defend Chartres.”
At the head of the Rue St. Jean, where it leads into the Place du ChÂtelet, one obtains the first and best view of the two beautiful spires at the west end of the Cathedral. The southern tower, dating back to the twelfth century and conceived in a style which harmonises with the broad and massive design of the whole building, is an example of what was contemplated as a finish to the other towers of the Cathedral. The northern tower, built in 1507 by Jean le Texier, well deserves its reputation as the most beautiful Gothic spire ever designed. “The one, fashioned by the Byzantine chisel, sprang into complete being in the heroic ages of faith in the days of war ... the other rose, after a long peace, under the hands of the still Christian architects of the Renaissance, when all dangers and difficulties had been surmounted.”
On contemplating the plan on which Chartres Cathedral was built one is struck with the enormous space which has been allotted to the choir. Here the new religious cult finds its earliest expression, greater provisions are made for its ceremonials, larger spaces are given both in choir and transepts for its gorgeous ritual than we find in Paris, Soissons or LÂon. Bishops, priests, deacons, choristers and serving-men needed a wider platform for the ministration of the sacred rites of the Church, and especially to this end was the Cathedral planned out. It is said that its construction was carried out with incredible rapidity in the desire to meet the pressing requirements of the people, who demanded that the Cathedral should be not only the house of prayer for the bishop and his canons, but essentially the mother church of the humblest of her worshippers.
The prevalence of a style, more or less uniform, with its main attributes harmonious and congruous, is the resultant of these forces working together. The completion of the Cathedral was carried out about 1240, and in 1250 were added the two porches at the entrance to the transepts. The sacristy was built in the thirteenth century, and a century later the little chapel of Saint Piat was attached to the eastern apse. The shortness of the nave is attributed to the desire to utilise the foundations of the old crypt for the choir and not to extend the building farther westward than the two existing towers. Between these two points, the walls of the crypt and the western towers, the nave had to be constructed and without any possibility of further extension.
CHARTRES
CHARTRES
No less than nine spires were originally designed and their towers actually commenced. What a magnificent effect would have been produced had they been completed! Standing on the high ground of the city, Chartres with its clustering pinnacles would have been one of the wonders of Christendom. The magnificent glass of the thirteenth century is so deep in tone that upon entering the building one is conscious of a darkness that can almost be felt, so much at variance with the effect of the interior of most large French Cathedrals.
The two porches placed outside the transept doors are the subject of a panegyric from the pen of Viollet-le-Duc. He considers them as the most beautiful and harmonious additions ever made to an existing building, and their architects proved themselves to be artists of the very first rank. No more beautiful specimen of a portal of the thirteenth century can elsewhere be found to exist; glorious and rejoicing in colour and in gold, and of surpassing sculpture and full of impressive and solemn statuary.
RUE DE LA PORTE GUILLAUME, CHARTRES
RUE DE LA PORTE GUILLAUME, CHARTRES
Near Chartres there are two small towns which might well be taken in a day’s excursion; both are connected with Chartres historically and both have a certain interest of their own certainly not devoid of attraction to one in search of antiquities. One is ChÂteaudun, whose fall during the war of 1870 was, as has been quoted above, the signal for the surrender of Chartres; the other is VendÔme, the township of the ancient feudal county. From Chartres it is ChÂteaudun that lies first in our road. It is a straight, neat little town—most of the streets cut one another at right angles—and the smoke of the Franco-Prussian war still seems to hover about the place; one of its chief memories, indeed, is the great fight in October, 1870, when a bare thousand franc-tireurs of the national guard kept the town for half a day against a Prussian army of ten times their strength, and the quiet market-square—now called the Place du 18 Octobre—was transformed into a battle-field. All the heroism that the day called forth, however, could not save the town from being sacked and burnt—the last of a long series of conflagrations, lasting from the sixth to the nineteenth century, that has won for the little town its cheerful, hopeful motto: “Extincta revivisco.” Certainly ChÂteaudun has risen from the flames with a fresh lease of its quiet life, but it has been completely modernised, and except for a few narrow alleys sloping down towards the river, which would seem to have escaped the general devastation, there is little that does not belong to to-day. This is, however, making an exception of the ChÂteau overlooking the Loire; a great exception, since at present all that there is to see in ChÂteaudun consists in this square pile on the brow of the hill; the rest, whatever it may once have been, is only a memory; and even the ChÂteau itself hardly seems a part of the town, since it is not until we have left the little white-painted streets behind that we realise its existence, and then it comes as a gigantic surprise; a huge, square, turreted mass, on its platform of rock, looking away over the rolling meadow lands, untroubled through all the years of siege and conflagration. Thibaut le Tricheur, Count of Champagne, built it in the tenth century; it was rebuilt in the twelfth century, and again by its seigneur, the famous “Bastard of OrlÉans,” one of the most devoted followers of Joan the Maid. Finally, under Louis XII., FranÇois d’OrlÉans-Longueville applied himself to fresh renovations, and built the splendid faÇade overhanging the Loire.
Considering that the Duc de VendÔme has always been a title of some importance in France since the early part of the sixteenth century, and the Comtes de VendÔme a power in the feudal world before that, one might feel rather surprised not to find the town itself presenting a more imposing aspect. VendÔme is a picturesque place, but it is more of a long straggling village than anything else, and it is only the ivied ruins on the cliff that take one back—with a stretch of imagination, it must be confessed—to the days of feudalism. VendÔme was originally, it is thought, a Gallic township under the name of Vindocinum; it was then fortified by the Romans, evangelised by Saint BienheurÉ, and finally became the seat of a feudal count about the end of the tenth century. In 1030 was founded the abbey of La TrinitÉ, whose church is one of the first “monuments” of VendÔme. It dates from the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries; the beautiful Transition faÇade is well worth notice, and so is the belfry tower, separated from the church and tapering up to a tall stone spire. Inside the church there are some fine choir stalls of the fifteenth century, of which the carving of the misÉricordes is very interesting in its variety and quaintness of design.
The Loire at VendÔme divides into several small streams, and in walking through the town one appears continually to be crossing a succession of bridges and coming upon fresh pictures of clear green water fringed by low-roofed houses and dark lavoirs with their curtains of snowy linen. Outside the town the river winds smoothly away past the cool quiet of the public gardens, to join its tributaries and cut its silver channels through the distant water-meadows.
“The route lay along the plateau until the heights were reached which enclose the valley of the Loir; the road winds down to the river beside hanging woods, red with autumn leaves not yet fallen, and crowned with a ridge of firs. A corner is turned and VendÔme comes in sight, lying beneath the shelter of the old ruined castle on the hill. As the horsemen enter the town the people all come to the doors of their houses and gaze with every sign of interested curiosity. There is an anxious expression in their faces. They do not welcome, though they obey their visitors with alacrity. They bring forth bread and meat and wine, and lay the tables for breakfast, but good cheer they have none to give.”—The Times: “Prussian Occupation of VendÔme.”
