The Story of Chartres

by Cecil Headlam

The failure of their efforts against the Porte Drouaise induced the Huguenots to direct their attention to the stretch of wall running from that gate to the Tower des Herses de Lethinière. And here it was that they established the breach so famous in the annals of Chartres. The whole of the 8th of March their batteries from the Clos-l’Évêque and the Filles-Dieu played upon the wall, and by two o’clock on the following afternoon a breach thirty feet wide had been made. The capable and energetic governor of the town, M. de Linières, had taken every possible measure of precaution to forestall the ill effects of the bombardment. As the breach widened a strong entrenchment was disclosed constructed of earth and bags of wool. A thousand workmen, soldiers and civilians, worked unceasingly at the task of throwing it up and strengthening it. Under pain of cord and gibbet, the inhabitants were impressed for the work. Night and day they toiled, and their toil was crowned with success. The Huguenots, seeing that there was no chance of delivering an assault with success, contented themselves with firing some salvoes on the 10th and 11th, and then shifted their artillery opposite the Porte Morard. There they began to endeavour, by destroying a large dam, to divert the course of the river, which ran through the lower town, and supplied the forces of the water-mills. This move, in spite of the wind-mills which M. de Linières had made at once, would very likely have been attended with serious results, had not rumours of peace begun to reach the ears of the belligerents. A truce, preliminary to the Peace of Longjumeau, was proclaimed. The Huguenots made haste to quit the town they had so unsuccessfully besieged. They removed their artillery on the 14th, and next day saw the last of their battalions disappear down the roads of Bonneval and Illiers.

‘Thus, after fourteen days of struggle and vain assault,’ exclaims our triumphant chronicler Rouillard, ‘the enemy were compelled to retire with great loss and slaughter, and to give once more occasion for the name des Reculés (see p. 47), to the quarter in the midst of which they had proudly raised their accursed tents.’ Disappointed of the plunder of the Cathedral treasure and of the pillage of the town upon which they had counted—for Condé himself had sold beforehand the lead of the Cathedral roof—they retired discomfited, to conclude the Peace of Longjumeau—La Paix boiteuse et mal assise, as it was called, because one of the negotiators was named Malassise, and the other was lame.

In memory of this deliverance it was decreed at Chartres that a solemn annual procession should take place on the 15th of March; that part of the street S. André should take the name of Rue de la Brèche, and that a commemorative inscription should be graven on the reconstructed wall.

In connection with the procession referred to we must mention the Tour de Ville, as it is called, or La Chandelle du Tour, or Le Tour de cire. This was a huge yellow wax candle, rolled on a wooden cylinder, and weighing as much as 220 pounds. ‘From time immemorial,’ the archives record, ‘the town of Chartres has been wont to maintain this candle before the Black Virgin of the pillar in front of the jubé. It was instituted originally by the community of the said town as an oblation for the safety of the town, and was to burn before the said image.’ Every day a piece was cut off and burnt on the town candlestick. For many years the Tour de la Ville was presented at one or other of the Church festivals indifferently, very often on the 17th of October, the Feast of the Dedication of the Cathedral. But in the seventeenth century it was decided that the presentation should take place on the 15th of March, the anniversary of the deliverance of the town from the siege of the Huguenots. The ceremony was very popular. All the officials of the town attended. Before the procession started the Mayor (for he had come into existence by that time), or, occasionally, some great man who happened to be the guest of the town at the time, lit the first candle before the shrine of the Black Virgin. Thereafter the Tour de Ville was carried in the procession to the breach. This custom lasted on to the days of the Revolution.

You can imagine the procession winding its way from the Cathedral down the steep curves of the Rue Muret towards the Place Drouaise and the Pont Neuf where once was the Porte Drouaise. Those who took part in it would pause, perhaps, and read the inscription let into the ramparts and engraved on two stones six feet long by three high which recorded the events of the siege in the Latin tongue for the instruction and example of posterity. One of the stones is, I gather, still preserved in the garden belonging to Madame Tillionbois de Valeuil and may be seen from the Pont Neuf. Pursuing their way up the Rue de la Brèche, the procession would next arrive at the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche on their left. Let the reader enter this tiny chapel, after noticing the arms sculptured above the window, and he will find himself face to face with a statue of the Virgin which rests on the keystone of the old chapel erected in 1599 in memory of this event, and near the site of the famous breach.

About the altar are numerous cannon-balls of stone which are relics of the siege. Entering the large annex on the right the visitor will now perceive a still more curious relic of the siege—the fourteenth or fifteenth-century statue of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, whose name was graven on the keystone above mentioned. And if he inquire how that name was earned he will be told that this is the very statue which was set over the Porte Drouaise and, by a miraculous intervention, saved the town. For the contemporary chronicler Duparc informs us that ‘For all that the chiefs of the Huguenot army were esteemed the greatest soldiers in Europe, yet were they miraculously blinded by a manifest miracle. And the miracle was on this wise. There was on the Porte Drouaise an image of Our Lady against which the enemy fired many shots from cannon and arquebus alike, but without being able to hit it. And to show that many shots were fired at the said gate on which was the said image, the bridge of that gate was broken and cut in twain by the cannon-balls, and all round the image up to a few inches of it the marks of many bullets may still be seen. But it was hit by never a one, and it remained therefore whole and intact; in spite of the efforts of the enemy to destroy that image, it was never struck by a single shot. I know well,’ he adds, ‘that the heretics and some others laugh at this, but Herod also mocked at Christ when he beheld Him.’

Another version of this miracle is given by Chaline (b. 1596) in his old Histoire de Chartres. ‘The Huguenots,’ he says, ‘having drawn near on the 9th of March to enter the town by the breach which they had made, it happened that there appeared on the said breach opposite to them a tall lady holding a child in her arms, against whom they fell to firing and to hurling volleys of abuse, without being able to reach or strike her in any way terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata. On the contrary, the bullets which they fired fell harmless, without effect or force, at the foot of the wall, and they, thinking to enter, found themselves repulsed. The Chartrains perceiving this, and knowing that it was the Holy Virgin who, with her Son, was thus visibly taking the defence of the town into her own hands, the ecclesiastics and women turned to pray, and the men of war and all capable of bearing arms made a sortie upon the besiegers and vigorously repelled them.’

By a further development, the popular tradition of the country, so prettily expressed in the verses of M. Jolliet which I have put at the head of this chapter, now maintains that the Virgin caught the bullets in the folds of her mantle.

The chapel founded in 1599 was destroyed during the Revolution and rebuilt in 1843. Leaving this chapel and pursuing its way along the street, the procession would next arrive at the Parish Church of S. André and the adjoining Chapel of S. Nicholas, and then, after singing an anthem there before the bas-relief which commemorated events of the siege, would make its way up the steep ascents back to the Cathedral.

The Church of S. André, as seen in its ruins and desecration to-day, presents one of the most offensive examples of callous profanation in France. When you have mastered your disgust with the disastrous and discreditable fact that this once magnificent building is used as a municipal lumber-room, you begin to perceive that its remains are still beautiful, and you regret the more keenly the fire which, when it was an army forage store in 1865, completed the damage begun by the Revolutionists. Take first the extremely beautiful and interesting west front, which presents, as it were, an epitome of mediæval architecture—the Norman or Romanesque arch, the Gothic beginning and the Flamboyant decadence are all represented. For the lower portion is composed of three round-headed arches, the soffits of which are ornamented with round mouldings and zigzag work, and rest on columns with curious capitals formed of acanthus leaves from which grotesque heads peep out. Above these three round arches are three pointed windows. The transition character of these is emphasised by the mouldings in the soffits being continuations of those in the side piers. The windows rest on a simple cornice, carried by corbels, also grotesque. Above them was a Flamboyant rose, demolished after the fire in 1865.