We reached Tiffanges without saying another word.
Tiffanges is an ancient Roman station. During Cæsar's wars with the Gauls, he sent Crassus, his lieutenant, there with the Seventh Legion; from thence Crassus proceeded to Theowald, the Doué of our day, where he pitched his camp. Crassus adolescens cum legione septimâ, proximus mare Oceanum in Andibus hiemârat.[2] This region of the Gauls was never wholly subdued by the Romans; the Pict kings always fought for their liberty there. Augustus had hardly ascended the throne before le Bocage uttered a fresh war-cry. Agrippa went there immediately, believed he had subjugated the inhabitants and returned to Rome. Again they rose in revolt. Messala succeeded him, and took Tibullus with him, who in his capacity of poet claims for himself a portion of the honours of the campaign—
"Non sine me est tibi partus honos: Tarbella Pyrene Testis, et Oceani littora Santonici; Testis Arar, Rhodanusque celer, magnusque Garumna, Carnuti et flavi, coerula lympha, Liger!"
—as much as to say, "You did not win this honour without me. Witness Tarbella the Pyrenean, and the coasts of the Santonic Ocean (Saintonge); remember also the Arar (the Saône) and the rapid Rhône and wide Garonne, and the Loire, the blue waters of the fair Carnute."
Possibly, too, Tibullus followed Messala in the same way that Boileau followed Louis XIV.; as to the Loire, if it was blue in the time of Augustus, it has changed its colour singularly since that day! Tiffanges is, indeed, a place full of memories of Cæsar, Adrian, Clovis and the Visigoths; near the Roman tomb springs the Frankish cradle, as can be clearly traced through the history of twenty long centuries. The château, the ruins of which we visited, seems to be an eleventh-century erection continued during the twelfth, and only finished at the end of the thirteenth century. The famous Gilles de Laval, Marshal of Raiz, who was known in the country under the name of Barbe-Bleue, inhabited this castle, and by his way of living gave rise to a multitude of popular traditions that are still quite fresh in the neighbouring villages. In short, as there is justice in heaven, and a man who pillaged twenty churches, ravished fifty maidens and gained riches must always end badly, to acquit Providence you ought to know that this Gilles de Laval was burnt in the meadow of Bièce, first being beheaded at the solicitation of his family, which had great influence with the sire de l'Hospital, who granted him this favour; but, previously, the condemned man made a speech, at the conclusion of which, says history, nothing could be heard but the sobbing of women. History also tells (but as it is history, you need not pin faith to it) that the fathers and mothers of high rank who heard Gilles de Laval's last words fasted three days to win Divine forgiveness for him, which, doubtless, he obtained, since his confessor was one of the cleverest of the time. That done, these same parents inflicted a whipping on their children, on the place of execution, to fix in their memories the recollection of the punishment that overtook the great criminal! History omits to tell us if the children of the sixteenth century were as fond of executions as those of the nineteenth.
[1] The army corp which had evacuated Mayence and which was ordered to la Vendée was really only composed of ten thousand four hundred men.
[2] Cæsar's Commentaries, I. iii. § 7.