Auxonne (the old Ad Sonam of the Romans, afterwards corrupted into Assona, then Assonium and finally as it is to-day) was but a dozen kilometres beyond Genlis, and, sitting astride the great highway from Paris to Geneva, was early a fortified place of great strategic importance. Vauban traced its last ramparts and it was thought likely to hold its rank for all time, but now the fortifications have disappeared and the city no longer takes its place as a frontier outpost, that honour having been usurped by Besançon in the Jura.
Of the military and feudal past there are still vivid memories at Auxonne. The chateau-fort is still there, built in different epochs by Louis XI, Charles VIII and Louis XII, and these works combined to make an edifice seemingly all-resistant, or at least formidable to a high degree. The chateau is still there, in part at least—not much has actually been despoiled, but actually the railway station is more militant in aspect. The stranger coming to Auxonne for the first time—unless he be prepared beforehand—will have grave doubts at first as to which is the chateau and which is the gare. The latter has a crenelated cornice, meurtrières pierced in its walls, and the vague appearance of bastions, all of which are also found in the real in the old chateau grimly overlooking the swift-flowing Saône. The enormous flanking towers of the real chateau, in spite of the city having been shorn of its prime military rank, are still kept in condition for the service of long-range guns, for the French are ever in a state of preparedness for the invasion which may never come. The lesson of “71” was well learned.
On the great entrance portal of the chateau is blazoned a stone-sculptured hedgehog, the devise of Louis XII, and in opposing niches are two carven angels holding aloft an escutcheon. Another doorway is hardly less impressive, though somewhat vague as to the purport of its ornament, which stands for nothing military or even civic.
This introduction to the militant glory of the Auxonne of other days is a ripe indication of the dignity with which the place was one day enhanced. Of a population to-day of something less than five thousand souls, the city shelters nearly three thousand soldiers of all arms. Its warlike aspect can hardly be said to have changed much from what it was of old in spite of the fact that its importance is lower down in the scale.
Another warlike reminder is the statue which rises proudly in the Place d’Armes. It is that of the Sous-Lieutenant Bonaparte as he was upon his arrival at Auxonne, a pallid youth just out of the military school of Brienne.
In the plain neighbouring upon Auxonne, a sort of mid-France Flanders, is a populous town with a momentous and romantic history, albeit its architectural monuments, save in fragments, are practically nil. The Revolutionary authorities took away its old name and called it “Belle Defense,” in memory of a heroic resistance opposed by the place to the invading Duc de Lorraine in 1616. Gallas had freed the Saône with thirty thousand men, and with Cardinal La Valette at the head of his army (a cardinal whom Richelieu had made a general) found Dijon so well guarded that he turned on his steps and attacked what is to-day Saint Jean-de-Losne. Fifty thousand soldiers in all finally besieged the place, and less than fifteen hundred of the inhabitants, and a garrison of but a hundred and fifty, held them at bay. The Duc d’Enghien, the future Grand Condé, then Governor of Burgundy, was able to send a feeble body of reinforcements and thus turn the tide in favour of the besieged.
For this great defence Louis XIII exonerated the city from all future taxes, and the grand cross of the Legion d’Honneur was allowed to be incorporated into the city arms, as indeed it endures unto to-day. The tracings of the former fortifications are plainly marked, though the walls themselves have disappeared.
Dole is commonly thought of as but a great railway junction. Besançon and Montbéliard are the real objectives of this itinerary through the Franche Comté and the half-way houses are apt to be neglected. For fear of this we “stopped over” at Dole.
Dole’s historic souvenirs are many and have in more than one instance left behind their stories writ large in stone. The present Hôtel de Ville was the old Palais du Parlement, built in the sixteenth century, from the designs of Boyvin, who was himself President of the Chambre at the time. Within the courtyard of this old Parliament House is an impressive donjon of a century earlier, the Tour de Vergy, which offers as choice a lot of underground cells, or oubliettes, as one may see outside the Chateau d’If or the Castle of Loches. The Palais de Justice at Dole, with a magnificently carved portal, was formerly the Couvent des Cordeliers and dates from 1572.
The memory of Besançon in the minds of most folk—provided they have any memory of it at all—will be recalled by the opening lines of Stendhal’s “Rouge et Noir.” “Besançon n’est pas seulement une des plus jolies villes de France, elle abonde en gens de cœur et d’esprit.”