Its beautiful inscription is finer still, I own.
’Tis writ in perfect Latin, so read and do not jeer:
’Hic pons confectus est’—it was built, you see, right here!”
All around Dinant it is a storied land. There was, for instance, the cow of Ciney, who made quite a stir in her day. It happened in the year of our Lord 1274, when the counts of Luxembourg and Namur were holding tournament at Andenne, and all the knights for leagues around had come flocking to show their prowess in feats of arms. Into the throngs gathered to watch the spectacle came a peasant, leading behind him the cow of cows. “He knew that after the heroic strife the contestants were accustomed to eat largely, and however much their glory, nothing was so comforting as a quarter of roast beef. Consequently he brought to sell to the butchers of Andenne a cow, superb and without faults, save for a slight blemish which did not in the least detract from the savour of the meat—she was not really the property of the young man, for he had stolen her.”
The cow belonged by rights to a good bourgeois of Ciney whose name was Rigaud. As it happened, he was in the crowd and recognized his property. Finding near him the sheriff of his town he stated his case and demanded instant justice on the robber. Now the sheriff was out of his own province, and had no authority to act. So he engaged the young man in conversation and led him artfully out of Andenne till they had crossed the boundaries of his own territory. Once there it was, of course, a very simple matter to seize him and hang him by the neck till he was dead.
But the matter did not end there, in spite of the good sheriff’s precautions. The peasant was not a native of either Ciney or Andenne, but of the village of Jallet. His fellow villagers considered themselves affronted, and complained to their overlord. He was more than affronted—he was positively outraged. Summoning his vassals he set forth to Ciney for the purpose of sending to its long rest the soul of the sheriff thereof. Ciney, however, closed its gates and sent to its brother towns for aid. Jallet likewise called upon its friends and laid siege to Ciney. The Duke of Brabant became involved in the war that followed, along with the counts of Flanders, Namur and Luxembourg. The Marshal of Liège invaded the Ardennes with fire and flame.
Presumably the cow of Ciney returned to her master’s home on the night of her abductor’s death. But for more than two years the war on her behalf was waged, and fifteen or twenty thousand men were killed. At last the King of France was called in to settle the dispute, and the weary disputants accepted his verdict thankfully enough. It was to the effect that each side being equally to blame, they must bear their own losses and leave things as they were before the war—so far as they could. Thus ended “la guerre de la vache de Ciney.”
Beyond Dinant lies the little village of Bouvignes, whose ruined tower of Crève-Cœur has its story, too. In the sixteenth century the French laid siege to the place, which was an important town at that time. Among its defenders were three men of Namur whose beautiful wives had followed them to the front, fighting always at their sides like Amazons. When they saw their lords fall dying before them and realized that the enemy was making the last assault, they climbed to the top of the tower and, joining hands, threw themselves upon the rocks below.
There have been forts in Namur since Roman days, and perhaps before that. A year ago there were nine, for the city with its thirty thousand inhabitants stands at the junction of the two rivers, Sambre and Meuse. Namur was the door to France, and the nine forts were its bolts and bars. On the 22d of August the Germans attacked it, and the next day the French, who had come to its defense, were forced to withdraw, defeated.