The use of hops was entirely unknown to the ancient Gauls, and how they, under these circumstances, contrived to keep their beer is a secret lost to us moderns. In the thirteenth century the French had a better species of double beer, which they called godale, probably from the English words good ale, or the Frisian gut ael. The wisest of men has said, “There is nothing new under the sun;” and a further illustration of the truth of this remark is afforded by the fact that, even thus early, the Parisian brewers were accustomed to put spices, bay-leaves, and pitch, into their beer to give it flavour. The statutes of Boileve, exclusively meant for brewers, say that these practices “ne sont ne bonnes ne loyaux.” Some there were who, according to Charles Etienne, added tares to the beer, at the risk of rendering the beverage not only intoxicating, but dangerous. But, as if to excuse this Parisian practice, the author adds, “The English mix in their beer sugar, cinnamon, and cloves, and afterwards clarify it.” Schookius, who wrote in 1661, tells us that it was the custom to salt the beer at Minden, in Westphalia; and that in Flanders they added besides the hops, the bay-leaf, gentian, sage, lavender, and clary, which is after all a species of sage.
There was a more agreeable beer, which was made sweeter with honey, and which was much in vogue in France among the rich. In Germany no other beer was drunk, and it became so popular in that country that it was forbidden to penitents, excepting on the Sunday, because, says the Council of Worms, “it was too voluptuous a drink.” This sweeter beer prevailed in France till the end of the sixteenth century, when liqueurs à l’eau de vie became the rage. The beer-brewers, not wishing to be behindhand, tried to make a species of liqueur out of their beer-vats. They produced an article called à l’ambre, in which there was a decoction of coriander seeds, and another à la framboise; but neither of these were successful. The beer of Cambrai was the best Continental beer in the sixteenth century, but it is beaten in the nineteenth by the brown beer of Bavaria, the white beer of Berlin, and the alembique of Brussels. It is in no respect wonderful that the inhabitant of the more northern regions should excel in this beverage the native of the sweet south. The German, the Fleming, the Dutchman, who drinks beer, and beer only, wishes it strong, nourishing, and malty; the Parisian, on the contrary, whose ordinary drink is wine, and who resorts to beer as we do in warm weather to soda water, pop, and ginger-beer, merely requires that the liquor shall be light, brisk, sparkling, and agreeable. I have no means of knowing the number of brewers in Paris at present, but there were forty 120 years ago, who annually made about 75,000 muids of beer (the muid is 300 pints). Little more than seventy years ago there were but twenty-three brewers in Paris, of whom the revolutionary Santerre was the most celebrated in the Faubourg St. Antoine. On the 10th of August he became commandant of the National Guard; on the 11th of December, he conducted Louis XVI. to the bar of the National Convention; and on the 21st of January, 1793, he commanded with Berryer the troops that were present at the execution of this unfortunate prince. It was the brewer Santerre who interrupted the monarch when he essayed to speak from the scaffold, and who caused his sovereign’s voice to be drowned by beat of drum. Santerre more than once showed the white feather, as the epitaph written on him proves:
“Ci gît le Général Santerre,
Qui n’avait de Mars que la bierre.”
That there are now as many brewers in Paris as there were a century ago may be well doubted. At the peace in 1815, a number of English and Scotch brewers went over, and entered into brewery speculations in Paris and the provinces; but the greater number of these were wholly ruined, and repented, when too late, of their short-sighted imprudence.
In seasons of dearth, the Paris brewers were forbidden by ordonnance to make beer. Ordonnances of the Prévôt de Paris appeared to this effect in 1415, and again in 1482. An arrêt of the council renewed this interdiction in 1693, and two others of the parliament to a like effect appeared in 1709 and 1740.
CHAPTER XX.
ON WINES, ANCIENT AND MODERN.
