Béarn and the Pyrenees

by Louisa Stuart Costello

Poitiers is one of the largest towns in France, but is very thinly inhabited; immense gardens, orchards, and fields, extend between the streets; the spaces are vast, but there is no beauty whatever in the architecture or the disposition of the buildings. The squares are wide and open, but surrounded by irregular, slovenly-looking houses, without an approach to beauty or elegance; the pavement is rugged, and cleanliness is not a characteristic of the place.

The churches are extremely curious, although, in general, so battered and worn as to present the aspect of a heap of ruins at first sight. This is particularly the case with Notre Dame, so revered by Richard Cœur de Lion, in the great place, before which a market is held. I never saw a church whose appearance was so striking, not from its beauty or grace, but from the singularly devastated, ruined state in which it towers above the buildings round, as if it belonged to another world. Nothing about it has the least resemblance to anything else: its heaps of encrusted figures, arches within arches, niches, turrets covered with rugged scales, round towers with countless pillars, ornaments, saints, canopies, and medallions, confuse the mind and the eye. All polish is worn from the surface, and so crumbling does it look, that it would seem impossible that the rough and disjointed mass of stones, piled one on the other, could keep together; yet, when you examine it closely, you find that all is solid and firm, and that it would require the joint efforts of time and violence to throw it down, even now.

The peculiar colour of the stone of which it is built, assists the strangeness of its effect; for it has an ancient, ivory hue, and all its elaborate carving is not unlike that on some old ivory cabinet grown yellow with age. A long series of scriptural histories, from the scene in Eden, upwards, are represented on this wonderful façade; besides much which has not yet been explained. Its original construction has been attributed to Constantine, whose equestrian statue once figured above one of the portals.

St. Hilaire, St. Martin, and all the saints in the calendar, still fill their niches, more or less defaced; row after row, sitting and standing, decorate the whole surface, in compartments; choirs of angels, troops of cherubims, surround sacred figures of larger size; and when it is recollected that all this was once covered with gilding and colours, it is difficult to imagine anything more splendid and imposing than it must have been.

The interior suffered dreadfully from the zeal of the Protestants, who destroyed tombs and altars without mercy. One group—the Entombment of Christ—common in most churches, is remarkable for the details of costume it presents, and the excellence of its execution. It belonged formerly to the abbey of the Trinity, and has been transferred to Notre Dame. The date seems to be about the end of the fifteenth century; the figures are of the natural size, and the original colouring still remains; the anatomical developments are faithful to exaggeration, and the finish of every part is admirable.

Some of the female heads are charming, with their costly ornaments, hoods, and embroidered veils; and the male figures, with the strange hats of the period, like that worn by Louis XI., have a singularly battered and torn effect, in spite of the smart fringed handkerchiefs bound round them, with ends hanging down and pieces of plate armour depending from their sides.

Several of the adornments of the altars are those formerly belonging to the church of the Carmelites, now the chapel of the grand seminaire. Above the crucifix which surmounts the tabernacle, is attached to the roof a bunch of keys: these are, according to tradition, the same miraculous keys taken from the traitor who proposed to deliver them to the English. The history of this transaction is as follows:—

In 1202, Poitou had risen against John Lackland, of England, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitou, taking the part of young Arthur, whom he had just made prisoner at Mirebeau. The town of Poitiers had closed its gates against John, warned by the example of Tours, which he had lately sacked and burnt. The King had posted his troops in the towns of Limousin and Perigord, with orders to his captains to endeavour to take Poitiers by surprise.

The mayor of Poitiers had a secretary who was both cunning and avaricious, who, bribed highly by the English, had consented to deliver the town to them. Accordingly, on Easter eve, a party of the enemy, under false colours, arrived at the Porte de la Tranchée; the secretary repaired instantly to the chamber of the mayor, to which he had access, expecting, as usual, that the keys would be found there; but, to his surprise, they were removed, nor could he find them in any other accustomed place. The traitor hastened to inform the English of the fact, by throwing a paper to them from the ramparts, requesting that they would wait till four o'clock in the morning, when he should be able to execute his purpose. At this hour he re-entered the mayor's chamber, and telling him that a gentleman wished to set out on a mission to the king of France at that early hour, begged that the keys might be delivered to him. The mayor sought for the keys, but they were nowhere to be found: he suspected some treason; and without loss of time assembled the inhabitants, and required that they should go at once to the Porte de la Tranchée, in arms, to be ready in case of surprise.

The report soon spread that the English were at the Tranchée, and the belfry sent forth its peals to summon all men to arms: in a very short space the whole town was roused, and every one hurried to the gates, where a strange spectacle met their view from the turrets. They beheld upwards of fifteen hundred English, dead or prone on the ground, and others killing them! The gates were thrown open, and the inhabitants sallied forth, making the remainder an easy prey, and taking many prisoners: the which declared to the mayor and the dignitaries of the town all the treason which had been arranged; and further related, that at the hour agreed on, they beheld before the gates a queen more richly dressed than imagination can conceive, and with her a nun and a bishop, followed by an immense army of soldiers, who immediately attacked them. They instantly became aware that the personages they saw were no other than the Blessed Virgin, St. Hilaire, and S^te. Radegonde, whose bodies were in the town, and, seized with terror and despair, they fell madly on each other and slaughtered their companions.