THE CITY OF REIMS IN 1635
(From an engraving of the period).
In the seventeenth century the still wine of the province of Champagne was destined, like the setting sun, to gleam with well-nigh unparalleled radiance up to the moment of its almost total eclipse. Continual care and untiring industry had resulted in the production of a wine which seems to have been renowned beyond all others for a delicate yet well-developed flavour peculiarly its own, but of which the wonderful revolution effected by the invention of sparkling wine has left but few traces. In 1604 the yield was so abundant that the vintagers were at their wits’ end for vessels to contain their wine; but three years later so poor a vintage took place as had not been known within the memory of man. During the winter the cold was so intense that wine froze not only in the cellars, but at table close to the fire, and by the ensuing spring it had grown so scarce that the veriest rubbish fetched 80 livres the queue at Reims.[60] In 1610, at the banquet following the coronation of Louis XIII., the only wine served was that of Reims, at 175 livres, or about 7 l., the queue; and the future raffinés of the Place Royale who assisted at that ceremony were by no means the men to forget or neglect an approved vintage after once tasting it. Champagne, it has been said, was crowned at the same time with the king, and of the two made a better monarch. Five years later a complaint, addressed to the king on the subject of the fermiers des aides trying to levy duties on goods sold at the fairs, asserted it was notorious that the chief commerce of Reims consisted of wines. According to the police ordinances of 1627, the price of these was fixed three times a year, namely, at Martinmas, Mid-Lent, and Midsummer; and tavern-keepers were bound to have a tablet inscribed with the regulation price fixed outside their houses, and were not allowed to sell at a higher rate, under a penalty of 12 livres for the first, and 24 livres for the second offence. Moreover, to encourage the production of the locality, they were strictly forbidden to sell in their taverns any other wine than that of the ‘cru du pays et de huit lieues es environs,’ under pain of confiscation and a fine, the amount of which was arbitrary. The vine-dressers too, in the same ordinances, were enjoined to kill and burn all vine-slugs and other vermin, which during 1621 and the two succeeding years had caused much damage.[61]
This rule must have been perforce relaxed during the troubles of the Fronde, when for two years the troops of the Marshal du Plessis Praslin lived as in a conquered country, indulging in drinking carousals in the wine-shops of the towns, or marching in detachments from village to village throughout the district, in order to prevent all those who neglected to pay the contributions imposed from working in their vineyards; when their leader, on the refusal of the Rémois to supply him with money, ravaged the vineyards of the plains of les Moineaux and Sacy; and when Erlach’s foreigners at Verzy sacked the whole of the Montagne from March until July 1650. As a consequence, people in the following year were existing on herbs, roots, snails, blood, bread made of bran, cats, dogs, &c., or dying by hundreds through eating bread made of unripe wheat harvested in June; the ruin of the citizens being completed, according to an eyewitness, at the epoch of dressing the vines, owing to the lack of men to do the work.[62] A contemporary writer, however, asserts that the vineyards still continued ‘to cover the mountains and to encircle the town of Reims like a crown of verdure;’ and that their produce not only supplied all local wants, but, transported beyond the frontier, caused the gold of the Indies to flow in return into the town, and spread its reputation afar.[63]
