Walker & Boutall sc.
Of the original town and its defences nothing is left, for even the old tower of the château in which Cardinal Mazarin imprisoned the Princes of Condé and of Conti, and the Duke of Longueville, has gone, and the only relic of the century that saw the birth of the city is the Church of Notre Dame. It stands in the Rue de Paris, near the Grand Quai, and is a mixture of the last flicker of Gothic and of Renaissance architecture. The building would appear to be the successor of the original Church of Notre Dame de Grâce, founded for the sailors of the port, which then bore the title of Le Havre-de-Grâce. In 1562 the Huguenots invited the English to enter the town, and the church tower was used as a gun platform, so that an effective fire on the royal camp could be maintained. But the townsmen paid for this by having the spire and walls of their church taken down. The rebuilding began in 1574, and the completion of the aisles and chapels took place in the following century.
Henri IV., Richelieu, and Colbert, who employed Vauban, not only improved the harbours, but added to the defences of the town, which in 1694 and 1759 resisted English bombardments. In 1856 the walls were removed, and the town now relies on three forts.
LEAVING HAVRE FOR ROUEN
The road to Rouen is through the Rue de Normandie, and this rapidly brings one to the suburb of Graville, where, on the left side of the road, on a hill above the Town Hall, stands the church of the Abbey of Ste. Honorine. It is an interesting building of the eleventh century, with curiously carved corbels outside, and within capitals as grotesque, and the sarcophagus which contained the remains of St. Honoria. Pilgrims, it is said, were just as numerous at Graville after the relics of the saint had been removed to Conflans for safety at the time of the Norman invasion!
The view over the Seine from the abbey church is exceedingly fine, and on sunny mornings the broad river shimmers in a silvery light.
HARFLEUR,
to which the tramway comes, is a quaint town, with narrow streets and a flamboyant church, whose highly enriched spire and curiously tall north porch, recessed in the wall and full of elaborate carving, give one a foretaste of that wealth of detail and medieval charm which a tour through Normandy offers to the stranger.
Either the walls of Harfleur must in 1415 have been exceedingly strong or their defenders of exceptional resource and courage, for in that year Henry V., with 30,000 English, besieged the town when the garrison numbered only 400, and yet for no less than forty days did they maintain the defence. It was 75 Englishmen to 1 Frenchman; but it generally took a few weeks to get through medieval walls, unless treachery or hunger came to the help of the attackers. Harfleur languished as a port owing to the shifting sand of the river-mouth, and the growth of Havre put an end to its commercial importance.
