IF Le Mans marks the first stage from Normandy upon the southward road, Angers may certainly be counted as another stepping-stone to the lands of the Loire—another landmark in our own history—another city upon a hill, and yet differing from all the hill cities before it. We are now in what Freeman calls “before all things the land and the city of counts,” the city which gave to history the name of Fulk the Black, warrior and pilgrim and enemy of Odo of Chartres; of Geoffrey the Hammer, who strove with the Conqueror at Domfront and AlenÇon; of RenÉ the minstrel and of Margaret his daughter, who carried to England the spirit of the old Angevin line, and fought with the strength of two for the inheritance of her husband, meek, scholarly Henry of Windsor, for whom the shield of faith had more significance than the shield of the warrior.
The house of Anjou cannot but have an interest to an Englishman, since it is the parent stock of our longest dynasty. Long before it came through Normandy into contact with England it held its own, however, in Gaul, Roman and Frankish. The Andecavi, who settled on the Maine, were an important tribe, and their city was of equal importance. In 464 the Saxons wandered down from Normandy and overran Anjou, but their occupation was merely temporary, and left no traces in city or people, as did the Saxon colonies at Bayeux and in England; and when this one cloud has cleared off, an open field is left for the history of the counts. Now the Counts of Anjou may be said to stand very near the head of the list of all the rulers in France at this early time—a long list, which numbers many important names, Hughs and Roberts of Paris, Williams and Richards of Normandy, Thibauts of Champagne—yet against whose feats of arms and feats of policy the Angevins can measure theirs almost one by one. “The restless spirit of the race showed itself sometimes for good and sometimes for evil, but there was no Count of Anjou who could be called a fool, a coward, or a fainÉant.”
The first count, Ingelgar, received his dominion from Charles the Bald, in about 870. After him comes Fulk the Red, who enlarged his father’s borders beyond the river; Fulk the Good, the scholar who defended his learning with the well-known proverb, “An unlettered king is but a crownÉd ass,” a saying which spread beyond his own realm and found favour at the court of England; and the warlike Geoffrey of the Grey Tunic, who repelled the Breton and Aquitanian incursions and fought in Frankish and German wars besides. Geoffrey it was who gave to the line the famous Fulk the Black, the first count who appears to any great extent in French history—the history, that is, of France proper, at that time apart from the great duchies on her boundaries. His wars with Odo filled a great part of his reign, and brought him down as far as the Loire, where, through the alliance of a count of PÉrigueux, Tours became his for a short time; also Saumur, after the victory of Pontlevois. On two occasions he turned pilgrim; and he is also found at Rome, applying to the Pope for consecration of his new monastery near Loches, which Hugh of Tours, whose see Fulk had robbed, refused to consecrate unless the stolen lands were restored. Naturally the Gallican Church resented this destruction of their privileges; the full wrath of the episcopate was pronounced against the recreant count, and a legend adds that in further punishment a wind came from heaven and blew down his newly-built church. How this uncanonical behaviour must have vexed the shades of Fulk the pious! Fulk Nerra was followed by Geoffrey, self-christened the Hammer. He rebelled against his father during his lifetime, but after his death continued the war with Chartres, and actually got possession of Tours, the one city for which every Angevin strove. Count Thibaut was formally deprived of the city by royal command, and it was handed over to Geoffrey, under the favour, the superstitious chroniclers make haste to add, of Saint Martin. Notwithstanding this royal grant, Henry, the Frank king, seems to have been perpetually at war with Geoffrey, and even to have called in feudal service of the Norman duke to aid him against the Angevin count. William himself was no friend to Anjou. The mastery over Maine was a bone of contention to the two great powers on its north and south borders; and when Geoffrey obtained the guardianship of little Count Hugh, and came into immediate contact with Normandy, a definite struggle arose. Geoffrey aimed at the two outposts of William’s territory, AlenÇon and Domfront. AlenÇon, through the treachery of its lord, surrendered to him; Domfront was also disaffected, and for a moment it seemed as though the land of the great Norman were to be invaded by his southern neighbour. But William was prepared for any emergency. He marched straight to Domfront, where Geoffrey had already stationed his troops, and laid siege to it. He remained before the town for some time before news came of the advance of Geoffrey himself; and when the Count at last arrived, he sent word of his readiness to give battle. But when the morning broke upon the Norman host, drawn up before the fortress all expectant of a battle with the Angevins, lo! no enemy was to be seen. Geoffrey, whose surname of Hammer by no means maligned his prudence, had thought better of the scheme in the night, and retired with all his men. The Norman writers, of course, set this down to cowardice. But one would like to hear the other side of the story. “Here, and throughout the war, the lions stand in need of a painter, or rather their painters suddenly refuse to do their duty. We have no Angevin account of the siege of Domfront to set against our evidently highly coloured Norman picture.”
“The French yearning to make everything new” has done its work in Angers, but though Fulk, Geoffrey, RenÉ, and the rest would be at a loss to recognise their old capital in the trim modern town, enough remains to show us what has been. No city standing as Angers does on rising ground above a wide river, with a mass of castle bastions sloping up the hill, could fail to have made history in its day. The modern town may be disposed of in a few words—it is clean and full of life, and altogether very far removed from the “black Angers” known to our ancestors. This mediÆval and grim-sounding title, reminiscent of dungeons and tyrant princes, probably either meant that the ancient town was closely and squalidly built, or else referred to the dark slate with which the country abounds, and which might well have been used for building purposes all over the town, as we still see it in some houses by the river.
The attractive side of Angers is that facing the water, and the river is quite worthy of the town on its banks, though Mr. Henry James does censure the “perversity in a town lying near a great river, and yet not upon it.” It is true that Angers has not got as far as the Loire; but it has what is next best, a tributary of the great river—a wide placid flow, which makes no mean show here, spanned as it is by three fine bridges. Looking upstream from the lowest bridge one sees the old and the new together; the clean well-to-do water-front, pleasant boulevards, and a bright little quay with every house the pattern of its neighbour; and above this the black mass of the castle, whose solid hugeness makes the crowning towers of Saint Maurice look as if they were cut out of paper, so delicately and sharply defined are they against the sky. Down river there is a long and sunny path, broad green meadows and a stretch of country beyond, and little fishing boats dotted about on the water.
But what Angers has of the best is its castle, though it be “the work of intruding Kings,” Philip Augustus and Louis IX., and not of the Angevin counts. It is, indeed, more massive than picturesque—“it has no beauty, no grace, no detail, nothing that charms or detains you; it is simply very old and very big—so big and so old that this simple impression is enough, and it takes its place in your recollections as a perfect specimen of a superannuated stronghold.” The huge grim bastions, girded with iron bands as though to give added strength to their already giant-like solidity, and the deep moat, filled in old days by the waters of the Maine, stood there for a very real and terrible use, and even now are a splendid example of how men in the Middle Ages defended themselves against all comers. The very steepness and plainness of the vast walls prevented an enemy from gaining any foothold, even supposing him to have crossed the moat in safety. But this great house of defence now gives on to a modern boulevard; a kitchen-garden occupies the moat, and sends the scent of thyme and rosemary up through those loop-hole windows, whose most peaceful prospect of old was the black, silent water below, and whose usual occupants were armed men with cross-bows, or boiling lead, or something equally quieting to the unwary spirit attempting to scale those unscalable ramparts.
In the heart of the town is a very comfortable little inn at the sign of the “Cheval Blanc.” The house has a quiet and rather old-fashioned atmosphere, perhaps a relic of past days, as the inn itself has stood there since the sixteenth century, though the present building is quite modern. Another relic—though the term hardly suits such a hale and hearty person—is a delightful old waiter, who has been at the Cheval Blanc for forty years, and wears on his coat with the greatest pride a minute piece of tricolor—the recognition of thirty years’ service. Close to the Cheval Blanc is the PrÉfecture, and this contains a hidden treasure in the shape of an old cloister, which runs along one side of the court. This cloister was not discovered until 1836, but the remains themselves date from the twelfth century, and are of extraordinary interest, not merely from their antiquity, but also from the immense variety of subject sculpture which adorns them. There are several bays of round-headed arches, and from their capitals and mouldings dragons and toads, snakes and winged lions, glare and wriggle at the visitor in a grotesque medley. In some cases Scriptural subjects are represented—there is notably the murder of the Innocents, a marvellously preserved and realistic fresco, reminiscent both in treatment and colour scheme of some of the Bayeux tapestry; the killing of Goliath by David, and the presentation of his head to Saul; and inside a very modern council-room, a wonderful allegory representing the defeat of Vice by Virtue. The Lamb, enhaloed, is in the centre; beneath are two lions tearing apart a wild boar; and in the jambs are virtues, armed with shield and sword, trampling upon demon vices—men struggling with wild beasts—and adoring angels swinging censers. This is partly coloured, and the sculpture is very fine, great attention being given to detail.
ANGERS
ANGERS
Freeman declares the city of Angers to be the headquarters of the Angevin style of architecture, and quotes as a noticeable example of that style the Cathedral of St. Maurice, which differs at least as widely from that of the French churches as from that of Normandy. The object of the Angevin architect was breadth, and he has sacrificed both length and height to the attainment of his end. The view from the west doorway of St. Maurice shows a well-known example of what is termed the “hall plan”—a single wide nave, having choir and transepts, but without ambulatories or aisles. That the church originally had aisles, however, is evident from a plan of Saint Maurice given in Mr. Lethaby’s “MediÆval Art”; they were removed, it is assumed, in order to simplify the construction of the vault. The great relieving arches of the nave as it now stands are divided into three bays only. “In everything,” Freeman says, “the tendency is to have a few large members rather than many small ones. There is a certain boldness and simplicity about this kind of treatment; but there is also a certain bareness, and an Angevin church looks both lower and shorter than it really is.” The vaulting of the roof here follows the same sub-domical design as that of Notre Dame de la CoÛture at Le Mans. The stained glass is perhaps the best feature of the church as far as actual beauty goes; some of it dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and both in nave and choir it is very fine, particularly in the windows of the apse and in the rose window of the north transept. The tapestry which hangs in the nave and transepts represents scenes from the Apocalypse, and is very fine Arras work of the fourteenth century.
