CORBELS, FROM THE CHAPTER
COURT GATEWAY, REIMS.
The stock of wine at Reims at the period of Mary’s first visit must have been very low, owing to the continued requisitions of it for armies in the field, for ‘German reiters at Attigny,’ and ‘Italian lansquenets at Voulzy;’ and no doubt its production subsequently decreased to some extent from the orders issued to the surrounding villagers to destroy all their ladders and vats lest they should fall into the hands of the enemy, at the epoch of the threatened approach of the German Emperor in 1552.
At the coronation of Francis II. in 1559, and at that of Charles IX. (the future instigator of the massacre of St. Bartholomew) two years later, the citizens of Reims presented the newly-crowned monarchs with the customary gifts of Burgundy and Champagne wines.[55] In the latter instance, however, the gift met with an unexpected return, inasmuch as the king, after the fashion of Domitian, issued an edict in 1566, ordering that vines should only occupy one-third of the area of a canton, and that the remaining two-thirds should be arable and pasture land. When the forehead of Henry III., the last of the treacherous race of Valois, was touched with the holy oil by the Cardinal de Guise, the wine of Reims for the first time was alone used to furnish forth the attendant banquet, and the appreciative king modified his brother’s edict to a simple recommendation to the governors of provinces to see that the planting of vines did not lead to a neglect of other labours. During this reign the wine of Ay reached the acme of renown, and came to be described as ‘the ordinary drink of kings and princes.’[56]
VIGNERON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
(Facsimile of a woodcut of the period).
In the troubles which followed the death of Henry III., when the east of France was laid desolate in turn by Huguenots and Leaguers, Germans and Spaniards; when Reims became a chief stronghold of the Catholics, who formed a kind of Republic there, and the remaining towns and villages of the district changed masters almost daily, the foragers of the party of Henry of Navarre and that of the League caused great tribulation amongst the vine-dressers and husbandmen of the Montagne and of the Marne. In 1589 very little wine could be vintaged around Reims ‘through the affluence of enemies,’ dolefully remarks a local analist.[57] After the battle of Ivry, Reims submitted to the king, but many of the surrounding districts, Epernay among the number, still sided with his opponents. Epernay fell, however, in 1592, after a cruel siege; and in the autumn of the same year the leaders of the respective parties met at the church of St. Tresain, at Avenay, and agreed to a truce during the ensuing harvest, in order that the crops of corn and wine might be gathered in—a truce known as the Trève des Moissons. The yield turned out to be of very good quality, the new wine fetching from 40 to 70 livres the queue.[58]
The system of cultivation prevailing in the French vineyards at this epoch must have been peculiar, since the staple agricultural authority of the day states that, to have an abundant crop and good wine, all that was necessary was for the vine-dresser to wear a garland of ivy, and for crushed acorns and ground vetches to be put in the hole at the time of planting the vine-shoots; that, moreover, grapes without stones could be obtained by taking out the pith of the young plant, and wrapping the end in wet paper, or sticking it in an onion when planting; that to get grapes in spring a vine-shoot should be grafted on a cherry-tree; and that wine could be made purgative by watering the roots of the vine with a laxative, or inserting some in a cleft branch.[59]