Bayonne to-day is frankly commercial; its docks and wharves are possessed of a considerable deep-sea traffic; and one sees three-masters from the Banks of Newfoundland, and cargo-boats from Senegal, side by side at its quays. It is, too, the distributing depot for the whole Basque country, the chief market where the peasant goes to buy Seth Thomas clocks and Smith and Wesson revolvers, each made in Belgium most likely; in England and America the cry is “made in Germany;” in France, it’s “made in Belgium.”
All of the Basque country, and a part of Béarn, depend on Bayonne for certain supplies; even Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz are but its satellites.
Walckenaer’s “Géographie des Gauls” says the evolution of the name Bayonne was from the Basque Lapurdam, “city of thieves,” but nothing to-day about her warm welcome for strangers justifies this, so it were best forgot. Bayonne in the old days—and to some extent to-day—spoke intermittently Gascon, Français, Béarnais and Spanish, and it is this notable blend of peoples and tongues that makes it so charming.
The Quartier Landais was the mother city of Bayonne, the oldest portion out of which the other faubourgs grew. Within the old walls, and in the narrow streets, all is mediæval even now, but in the newer quarters the straight, rectangular lines of streets and sidewalks are, as the French call them, à l’Américaine.
The Pont Mayou at Bayonne is the liveliest, gayest spot in all the Basque country. It is the virtual centre of this ancient capital.
Bayonne’s cathedral is lovely enough when viewed from afar, particularly the ensemble of its spires with the roof-tops of the town—a sort of reminiscence of Nuremberg—and this in spite of the fact that Taine in his description of it called it ugly.
In the olden times, the city had an important Jewish quarter, whose inhabitants were an overflow of those expelled from Spain and Portugal. This little city of the Landes became a miniature Frankfort, and had three synagogues where the rabbis held services in the Spanish tongue. The phenomenon has disappeared, by a process of evolution and infusion, and one no more remarks the Jewish type as at all distinct from the Basque.
An incident happened at Bayonne fort during the Peninsular War which seems to have been greatly neglected by historians, though Gleig, the novelist, in “The Subaltern,” makes much of it. The English, believing that peace had been declared, resented an unprovoked French sortie from Bayonne’s citadel on the tenth of April, 1814. This was the last British fight on French soil, if fight it was. A number of the guards, including four officers, died of wounds received at this engagement.
The following anonymous verses tell the story well:
“For England here they fell.
Yon sea-like water guards each hero’s grave.
Far Pyrenean heights, mindful, attest
That here our bravest and our best
Their supreme proof of love and loyalty gave,
Dying for England well.