III
Here the towns are set as close together as the jewels in a crown. We have scarcely left Orange before we see, beyond the green belt of the Rhone, the mediæval outline of the Palace of the Popes. L’Ile Sonnante, as Rabelais called it, rises out of the plain and the water like an island indeed, much as our own little Rye stands up out of the Sussex marshes. With its steeples and convents, its towers and buttresses, massed round the tremendous fortress on the central rock, girdled by an outer circle of crenelated ramparts, this fair town of Avignon appears the very sanctuary of the Middle Ages.
The great interest of Avignon is that it appears a town of one time—a flower of the fourteenth century still full of life and vigour. The tower of Philippe le Bel at Villeneuve dates from 1307; the great Palace of the Popes, the fortifications of the town, with their battlements and machicolations, and the vast round yellow fortress of St. André, massive against its background of olive-coloured hills—all these, and many smaller relics, belong to the second half of the fourteenth century. Even here in the South, few cities can show so many or such pure examples of the military architecture of the time.
The city wall of Avignon, since in part destroyed, had, when I saw it, a circumference of about fifteen thousand
feet. It stood twelve metres in height. It had thirty-five towers, many turrets, was crowned with battlements, and pierced with machicolations. These last, as every one knows, are open spaces left between the wall and the frieze of arcades which supports the balcony intended for the garrison (the chemin de ronde), spaces which form great oblong holes in the flooring of the balcony, and through which boiling water, flaming tow, lighted oil, arrows, stones, and other missiles might be poured down on assailants engaged in undermining the foot of the wall. The walls of Avignon, substantial as they appeared, would have been but a phantasmal protection against a good mitrailleuse: the modern town wore them as an ornament, and not as armour. The gates, dismantled of their old portcullises, served for the collection of the toll, and the officials of the octroi lodged in the romantic gatehouses. One of these guardians, moved by our interest in his unusual dwelling, led us up through his kitchen and bedroom in the gate-tower, on to the balcony that crowns the wall. He left us there in company with his wife and several babies, whom I expected, at every instant, to tumble through the holes of the machicoulis; they showed, however, the address and ingenuity of true mediæval babyhood in avoiding these pitfalls, and appeared to find the superannuated battlements an admirable playground. Less adroit, we found the chemin de ronde very dizzy walking; and our interest in this relic of military architecture was chequered by the fear of being precipitated into space.
The walls of Avignon were less interesting than its vast central fortress. It is difficult to imagine a monument so irregular, so labyrinthine, such a mere sombre maze of towers and walls, of corridors and staircases. Not a tower is absolutely square, not an angle true, not a communication simple or direct. All is unexpected, dædal, disconcerting, in this gigantic relic of an era of confusion.
For the Palace of the Popes was not only a palace, but a stronghold. It was a necessary answer to the fortress which, in 1307, the King of France had built at Villeneuve across the Rhone; it was necessary also for defence against the troops of marauders who infested France after Crécy and after Poitiers. We remember how, in 1357, a knight, by name Sir Reynold of Cervole, commonly known as the Archpriest, scoured all Provence with a company of men-at-arms of all countries, who, since the King of France was captive and their arrears unpaid, turned brigands, and made a good thing of escalading castles, and ransoming rich and timid cities. Froissart has told us how the Archpriest and his men laid siege to Avignon, striking terror into the hearts of Innocent VI. and his cardinals. At last, the Papal Court agreed to pay forty thousand crowns to the company, as an inducement towards its withdrawal. The brigand-chief came to terms as regards the money, but he demanded certain small additions to the contract, for he remembered that he was not a mere marauder, but a person of good family, with other claims to consideration. He exacted, therefore, a free pardon for all his sins, and several invitations to dinner. The Pope and his cardinals “received him as reverently as if he had been the son of the King of France himself.” Then he consented to lead his followers elsewhere; and after his departure the Pope considerably improved the fortifications of Avignon.
By 1370 the city was strong enough to set such besiegers at defiance, and the palace had grown into the fortress we admire to-day. It is composed of seven huge corps de logis, separated by courts or quadrangles; and these are riveted to each other by seven immense and sombre towers. The whole forms a parallelogram of over twelve thousand square yards. It is an imposing, a tremendous pile—not beautiful, but unforgettable; conspicuous by the rare height of its walls and towers, and by the extraordinary upleap of its buttresses, which shoot right up the wall to the balcony, and form the great arcade which masks the largest machicoulis that I have ever seen. Not only pitch and Greek fire, but great beams and boulders could pass through these openings to crush the assailant underneath. Such a fortress appears impregnable to the eye: the height of the walls renders an escalade impossible; the garrison on the balcony atop is out of bowshot, and the huge buttresses defend the base against the sapper. At one-third of its height the wall supports a second balcony, whence the besieged could deal deadly damage on their assailants.
Within, the palace is disfigured by its present use as a barracks. The vast halls are ceiled over at mid-height and turned into dormitories. Nearly all the frescoes, painted in the melancholy, elegant manner of Simone Memmi and the Sienese, have been disfigured within this century. There is a party in Avignon naturally indignant at this defacement, which is all for buying the palace from the Government and turning it into a museum. This, however, would cost a great deal of money. And, as a mere impression, the great bare dædal building, gay with the crowded life of these youths of twenty, who race up and down stairs in noisy troops, or sit in the shadowy window-seats (picturesque figures in their white undress, black haversacks and deep-red caps), or fill the sombre quads with march and drill—yes, as a mere impression, it is certainly more appropriate as it is.