Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside

by Edward Harrison Barker

Vines, vines, nothing but vines, gradually shading down to the darkness of the night that covers them. Then, when the dusky gauze of the cloudless night is drawn all over it, the broad leafy land sleeps under the sparkling stars.

Here at Libourne I am in a town of whose English origin there can be no doubt. It was one of the thirteenth-century bastides founded in Guyenne by Edward I. These bastides were at the outset intended as places of refuge for serfs and other non-belligerents of the rural districts in time of war. Their character was that of free or open towns, and most of the burgs that still bear the name of Villefranche in the South of France were originally bastides. Not a few of them keep the name of La bastide, in combination with some other to this day. They are to be found all over Guyenne and a great part of Languedoc. They were often fortified with a wall, a palisade, and a moat. Their strong peculiarity, however, the one that has been preserved in spite of all the changes that centuries have brought, was the rectilinear and geometrical manner in which they were laid out. In contrast to the typical mediaeval town that grew up slowly around some abbey, or at the foot of some strong castle that protected it, and in the building of which, if any method was observed, it was that of making the streets as crooked as possible, to assist the defenders in stopping the inward rush of an enemy, the streets of the bastide were all drawn at right angles to each other. Consequently, however old the houses may be, such towns have somewhat of a modern air. For the same reason, one of the chief attributes of the picturesque—an accidental meeting of various motives—is absent. To the inhabitants of these free towns a certain quantity of land was apportioned in equal parts, for which a fixed rent was paid to the king or other feudal lord.

I have said that the bastides were not picturesque. In their early days they must have been quite hideous; but time, that plays havoc with human beings, lends to such of their works as may offer to it the resistance of a long, hard struggle an interest which becomes at length a beauty. There is usually to be found in these towns the thirteenth-century place, or square, which formed, as it were, the heart of the commune. Along each of the four sides is a Gothic arcade, on which the first and all the higher storeys of the houses rest. Thus, there is a broad pavement completely vaulted over on each side of the quadrilateral, where people can walk, sheltered from the sun or rain, These old squares, wherever they are found, are now always picturesque.

Libourne, from being a small bastide, grew to such importance, on account of its position on the right bank of the Dordogne and the wine trade that it was able to carry on by water, that it rivalled Bordeaux before the close of the English domination, and the question of making it the capital and the seat of the Prince of Wales and Aquitaine was seriously pondered. To-day it preserves all the plainness of its line-and-rule origin; but it has a few redeeming features, such as one side of its ancient square, with broad pavement under Gothic arches, a picturesque town-hall of the sixteenth century, and a curious mediaeval tower, with machicolated embattlements, now capped with a very tall and pointed roof, and known as the Tour de l'Horloge. It is a remnant of the fourteenth-century ramparts.

The people of Libourne were steadfast partisans of the English to the last, and after 1453 they did not seek to distinguish themselves by their resignation to the rule of the French kings. When in 1542 the insurrection against the salt-tax, commencing at La Rochelle, spread over Saintonge and the whole of Western Guyenne, the Libournais threw themselves heartily into the movement. When the time of repression came they were made to smart sorely for their turbulent spirit. The Place de l'Hotel de Ville, of which one side remains very much as it was then, bristled with gibbets, and 150 persons were hanged in a single day. The man who had rung the tocsin that called together the insurgents was suspended by the neck to the hammer of the bell, as a warning to others not to ring it again unless they had a better motive.

[Illustration: TOUR DE L'HORLOGE AT LIBOURNE.]

Standing by the broad river, a little above the point where the Isle is falling into it, carrying down all manner of craft with the tide, I see at a distance of a couple of miles or so towards the west the hill that is known in history as Le Tertre de Fronsac. There Charlemagne built a castle, of which nothing now remains. The hill owes its modern celebrity entirely to its wine. It is not everybody who knows the virtue of the genuine Fronsac, especially that which was yielded by the old vines before the phylloxera destroyed them, but most people are familiar with the brand. But for this, the tertre would long since have ceased to be famous, notwithstanding Charlemagne.

The hill has a strange appearance, for it rises abruptly from the river bank in the midst of the plain. It did not tempt me to walk to it in the scorching heat, but as a steamboat was going there, I paid two sous and went on board. I had never been in such a cockle-shell of a steamer before. It rocked and tumbled like a coracle, and spat and fumed and snorted like a veritable devil composed of an engine, a couple of paddle-wheels, and a few boards. Helped by the tide that was pouring out, it went down stream at a rate that was almost exciting, and in a few minutes I was landed at the bottom of the famous hill. I made a conscientious attempt to reach the top, but was stopped just where it began to grow interesting by a notice-board that warned me, if I ventured any farther, I should be prosecuted and heavily fined. Such things are not often seen in France. Vineyards are generally open, but here they were fiercely protected with walls and fences and notice-boards. The land was evidently very precious. I had wandered into truly civilized country, where land and manners were too highly cultivated to please me, and I again regretted the rocky wastefulness that I had left behind me.

[Illustration: THE HILL OF FRONSAC.]

I turned back, and wandering about the village, which is a straggling one, looked for the church, hoping that this at least would show something of interest. Not being able to find it, I asked a man to tell me the way to it, and he, stopping, said: