The prevalence of a style, more or less uniform, with its main attributes harmonious and congruous, is the resultant of these forces working together. The completion of the Cathedral was carried out about 1240, and in 1250 were added the two porches at the entrance to the transepts. The sacristy was built in the thirteenth century, and a century later the little chapel of Saint Piat was attached to the eastern apse. The shortness of the nave is attributed to the desire to utilise the foundations of the old crypt for the choir and not to extend the building farther westward than the two existing towers. Between these two points, the walls of the crypt and the western towers, the nave had to be constructed and without any possibility of further extension.
No less than nine spires were originally designed and their towers actually commenced. What a magnificent effect would have been produced had they been completed! Standing on the high ground of the city, Chartres with its clustering pinnacles would have been one of the wonders of Christendom. The magnificent glass of the thirteenth century is so deep in tone that upon entering the building one is conscious of a darkness that can almost be felt, so much at variance with the effect of the interior of most large French Cathedrals.
The two porches placed outside the transept doors are the subject of a panegyric from the pen of Viollet-le-Duc. He considers them as the most beautiful and harmonious additions ever made to an existing building, and their architects proved themselves to be artists of the very first rank. No more beautiful specimen of a portal of the thirteenth century can elsewhere be found to exist; glorious and rejoicing in colour and in gold, and of surpassing sculpture and full of impressive and solemn statuary.
Near Chartres there are two small towns which might well be taken in a day’s excursion; both are connected with Chartres historically and both have a certain interest of their own certainly not devoid of attraction to one in search of antiquities. One is Châteaudun, whose fall during the war of 1870 was, as has been quoted above, the signal for the surrender of Chartres; the other is Vendôme, the township of the ancient feudal county. From Chartres it is Châteaudun that lies first in our road. It is a straight, neat little town—most of the streets cut one another at right angles—and the smoke of the Franco-Prussian war still seems to hover about the place; one of its chief memories, indeed, is the great fight in October, 1870, when a bare thousand franc-tireurs of the national guard kept the town for half a day against a Prussian army of ten times their strength, and the quiet market-square—now called the Place du 18 Octobre—was transformed into a battle-field. All the heroism that the day called forth, however, could not save the town from being sacked and burnt—the last of a long series of conflagrations, lasting from the sixth to the nineteenth century, that has won for the little town its cheerful, hopeful motto: “Extincta revivisco.” Certainly Châteaudun has risen from the flames with a fresh lease of its quiet life, but it has been completely modernised, and except for a few narrow alleys sloping down towards the river, which would seem to have escaped the general devastation, there is little that does not belong to to-day. This is, however, making an exception of the Château overlooking the Loire; a great exception, since at present all that there is to see in Châteaudun consists in this square pile on the brow of the hill; the rest, whatever it may once have been, is only a memory; and even the Château itself hardly seems a part of the town, since it is not until we have left the little white-painted streets behind that we realise its existence, and then it comes as a gigantic surprise; a huge, square, turreted mass, on its platform of rock, looking away over the rolling meadow lands, untroubled through all the years of siege and conflagration. Thibaut le Tricheur, Count of Champagne, built it in the tenth century; it was rebuilt in the twelfth century, and again by its seigneur, the famous “Bastard of Orléans,” one of the most devoted followers of Joan the Maid. Finally, under Louis XII., François d’Orléans-Longueville applied himself to fresh renovations, and built the splendid façade overhanging the Loire.
Considering that the Duc de Vendôme has always been a title of some importance in France since the early part of the sixteenth century, and the Comtes de Vendôme a power in the feudal world before that, one might feel rather surprised not to find the town itself presenting a more imposing aspect. Vendôme is a picturesque place, but it is more of a long straggling village than anything else, and it is only the ivied ruins on the cliff that take one back—with a stretch of imagination, it must be confessed—to the days of feudalism. Vendôme was originally, it is thought, a Gallic township under the name of Vindocinum; it was then fortified by the Romans, evangelised by Saint Bienheuré, and finally became the seat of a feudal count about the end of the tenth century. In 1030 was founded the abbey of La Trinité, whose church is one of the first “monuments” of Vendôme. It dates from the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries; the beautiful Transition façade is well worth notice, and so is the belfry tower, separated from the church and tapering up to a tall stone spire. Inside the church there are some fine choir stalls of the fifteenth century, of which the carving of the miséricordes is very interesting in its variety and quaintness of design.
The Loire at Vendôme divides into several small streams, and in walking through the town one appears continually to be crossing a succession of bridges and coming upon fresh pictures of clear green water fringed by low-roofed houses and dark lavoirs with their curtains of snowy linen. Outside the town the river winds smoothly away past the cool quiet of the public gardens, to join its tributaries and cut its silver channels through the distant water-meadows.
“The route lay along the plateau until the heights were reached which enclose the valley of the Loir; the road winds down to the river beside hanging woods, red with autumn leaves not yet fallen, and crowned with a ridge of firs. A corner is turned and Vendôme comes in sight, lying beneath the shelter of the old ruined castle on the hill. As the horsemen enter the town the people all come to the doors of their houses and gaze with every sign of interested curiosity. There is an anxious expression in their faces. They do not welcome, though they obey their visitors with alacrity. They bring forth bread and meat and wine, and lay the tables for breakfast, but good cheer they have none to give.”—The Times: “Prussian Occupation of Vendôme.”