"At the Museum of Lyons there is a canoe which was found in the gravel of the Rhone, near the bridge of Cordon, in the department of Ain. It is 41 feet in length, and hollowed out of a single trunk of oak tapering off at the two ends. The middle of it is squared, and the interior is strengthened by two braces left in the solid wood.
"Lastly, we must mention the canoe that was dug out of the bed of the Seine in Paris, and presented by M. Forgeais to the Emperor. It is now in the Museum of Saint-Germain. It was made of a single trunk of oak and had been skilfully wrought on the outside, terminating in a point at both ends. This canoe was bedded in the mud and gravel at the extremity of the Cité, on the Notre-Dame side. Close by a worked flint was met with, and various bronze weapons; among others, a helmet and several swords were also found. In the beds of rivers objects belonging to different epochs readily get mixed up. This flint appears to have accidentally come thither; the bronze arms, on the contrary, seem to mark the date of the canoe."[25]
We have previously spoken of the primitive workshop of human industry, of which, indeed, we gave a design. In contrast to this peaceful picture, we may also give a representation of the evidences which have been preserved even to our own days of the earliest means of attack and defence constituting regular war among nations. War and battles must have doubtless taken their rise almost simultaneously with the origin of humanity itself. The hatred and rivalry which first sprung up between individuals and families—hatred and rivalry which must have existed from all time—gradually extended to tribes, and then to whole nations, and were outwardly expressed in armed invasions, pillage and slaughter. These acts of violence were, in very early days, reduced to a system in the art of war—that terrible expedient from which even modern nations have not been able to escape.
In order to find the still existing evidence of the wars which took place among men in the Stone Age, we must repair to that portion of Europe which is now called Belgium. Yes, even in the Stone Age, at a date far beyond all written record, the people of this district already were in the habit of making war, either among themselves or against other tribes invading them from other lands. This fact is proved by the fortified enclosures, or entrenched camps, which have been discovered by MM. Hannour and Himelette. These camps are those of Furfooz, Pont-de-Bonn, Simon, Jemelle, Hastedon, and Poilvache.
All these different camps possess certain characteristics in common. They are generally established on points overhanging valleys, on a mass of rock forming a kind of headland, which is united to the rest of the country by a narrow neck of land. A wide ditch was dug across this narrow tongue of land, and the whole camp was surrounded by a thick wall of stones, simply piled one upon another, without either mortar or cement. At the camp of Hastedon, near Namur, this wall, which was still in a good state of preservation at the time it was described, measured 10 feet in width, and about the same in height. When an attack was made, the defenders, assembled within the enclosure, rained down on their assailants stones torn away from their wall, which thus became at the same time both a defensive and offensive work (fig. 127).
Fig. 127.—The earliest regular Conflicts between Men of the Stone Age; or, the Entrenched Camp of Furfooz.
These entrenched positions were so well chosen that most of them continued to be occupied during the age which followed. We may mention, as an instance, the camp of Poilvache. After having been a Roman citadel it was converted in the middle ages into a strongly fortified castle, which was not destroyed until the fifteenth century.
The camps of Hastedon and Furfooz were likewise utilised by the Romans.