Not in the royal domain of France itself, not in luxurious Touraine, was there more love of splendour and the gorgeous trappings of the ceremonial of the middle ages than in Burgundy. It has ever been a land of prosperity and plenty, to which, in these late days, must be added peace, for there is no region in all France of to-day where there is more contentment and comfort than in the wealthy and opulent Departments of the Côte d’Or and the Saône and Loire which, since the Revolution, have been carved out of the very heart of old Burgundy.
The French themselves are not commonly thought to be great travellers, but they love “le voyage” nevertheless, and they are as justifiably proud of their antiquities and their historical monuments as any other race on earth. That they love their patrie, and all that pertains to it, with a devotion seemingly inexplicable to a people who go in only for “spreadeaglism,” goes without saying.
“Qu’il est doux de courir le monde!
Ah! qu’il est doux de voyager!”
sang the author of the libretto of “Diamants de la Couronne,” and he certainly expressed the sentiment well.
The Parisians themselves know and love Burgundy perhaps more than any other of the old mediæval provinces; that is, they seemingly love it for itself; such minor contempt as they have for a Provençal, a Norman or a Breton does not exist with regard to a Bourguignon.
Said Michelet: “Burgundy is a country where all are possessed of a pompous and solemn eloquence.” This is a tribute to its men. And he continued: “It is a country of good livers and joyous seasons”—and this is an encomium of its bounty.
The men of the modern world who own to Burgundy as their patrie are almost too numerous to catalogue, but all will recall the names of Buffon, Guyton de Morveau, Monge and Carnot, Rude, Rameau, Sambin, Greuze and Prud’hon.
In the arts, too, Burgundy has played its own special part, and if the chateau-builder did not here run riot as luxuriously as in Touraine, he at least builded well and left innumerable examples behind which will please the lover of historic shrines no less than the more florid Renaissance of the Loire.
In the eighteenth century, the heart of Burgundy was traversed by the celebrated “coches d’eau” which, as a means of transportation for travellers, was considerably more of an approach to the ideal than the railway of to-day. These “coches d’eau” covered the distance from Chalon to Lyon via the Saône. One reads in the “Almanach de Lyon et des Provinces de Lyonnois, Forêz et Beaujolais, pour l’année bissextile 1760,” that two of these “coches” each week left Lyon, on Mondays and Thursdays, making the journey to Chalon without interruption via Trévoux, Mâcon and Tournus. From Lyon to Chalon took the better part of two and a half days’ time, but the descent was accomplished in less than two days. From Chalon, by “guimbarde,” it was an affair of eight days to Paris via Arnay-le-Duc, Saulieu, Vermanton, Auxerre, Joigny and Sens. By diligence all the way, the journey from the capital to Lyon was made in five days in summer and six in winter. Says Mercier in his “Tableau de Paris”: “When Sunday came on, the journey mass was said at three o’clock in the morning at some tavern en route.”
The ways and means of travel in Burgundy have considerably changed in the last two hundred years, but the old-time flavour of the road still hangs over all, and the traveller down through Burgundy to-day, especially if he goes by road, may experience not a little of the charm which has all but disappeared from modern France and its interminably straight, level, tree-lined highways. Often enough one may stop at some old posting inn famous in history and, as he wheels his way along, will see the same historic monuments, magnificent churches and chateaux as did that prolific letter writer, Madame de Sévigné.