WANDERINGS ROUND ST VALERY.
Should there be any one who wishes to spend a few weeks in a quiet French watering-place not far from the English coast, let him try St Valery. Here he will not find the fashion and gaiety of Trouville, requiring a dozen new costumes for his wife in as many days, nor the picturesque scenery of Biarritz and the Pyrenees. Yet the flat plains of Picardy have their charms, and there is much to interest the archæologist. This is the classic ground of the troubadours. There are great memories of heroic deeds in the middle ages, and some of the finest monuments of religious zeal. Rivers flow quietly through narrow valleys, planted with willows and poplars, often enlarging into small lakes, where the water-lily spreads its broad leaves and queenly flowers.
Wandering on the downs near the sea, the scenery is sad, but offers a grand and severe beauty of its own. Nothing is there to recall the presence of man; it is a desert, with the eternal murmur of the ocean and the ever-changing aspects of the season. Animals and birds abound in these solitudes; rabbits swarm in their burrows to such a degree that fourteen hundred have been taken from one spot at the same time. The fishing-hawk comes to seek its food in the finny tribes that rise to the surface of the water; a species of wild-fowl intrudes into the rabbit’s burrow and there builds her nest; the sea-gull deposits her eggs on the bare rock; the curlew mingles her plaintive cry with the harsher note of the heron. In the cold days of winter the swan, the eider-duck, the wild-goose, driven from the northern seas by the ice, take refuge on the sands left bare at low-water. Sometimes, during the prevalence of east wind, rare foreign birds are driven to the shores; and in the marshes, lapwings, snipes, and water-fowl abound. Capital ground this, for the ornithologist and wild-fowler.
St Valery itself, situated on the river Somme and occupying an important military position, suffered most cruelly in the wars of the middle ages. Its old walls have seen the inhabitants slaughtered and the fleets burned twenty times; English, Burgundians, and Spaniards have helped to level it to the dust; yet the brave little town has risen again from its ruins and set to work to restore its thriving commerce. Here it was that a tragical event happened in the thirteenth century, when the powerful Lord de Coucy held his sway. Many a story-teller and troubadour has narrated within the castle walls how he married the lovely Adèle, daughter of the Comte de Ponthieu, and how, as she was passing through a forest with too small an escort for such lawless times, she was attacked by brigands and subjected to the greatest indignities. Her husband, with equal cruelty, wished to efface the affront, and ordered her to be thrown into the sea. Some Flemings, sailing on their way to the Holy Land, saw the beautiful lady floating on the waves, took her on board, and when they arrived, sold her to the Sultan of Amaria, who by kind treatment made her happy in her banishment.
But whilst she forgot her country and her religion, the husband and father were filled with the deepest remorse, and determined to do penance by going to Jerusalem. A fearful tempest stranded them on the territory of the Sultan, by whose orders they were thrown into a dungeon. The day after, a great festival was held in honour of the Sultan’s birthday; and according to the custom of the country, the people came to the palace to demand a Christian captive to torture and kill. The choice fell upon the Comte de Ponthieu. When he was brought out, and the astonished Adèle recognised him, she said to her husband: ‘Give me, I pray you, this captive; he knows how to play at chess and draughts.’ Her request was granted; and then another captive appeared, the Lord de Coucy. ‘Let me also have this one,’ she said; ‘he can tell wonderful stories to amuse me.’ ‘Willingly,’ answered the obliging Sultan. Recognition was soon established among the three; pardon was sought, and granted; and Adèle, under pretext of taking a sail, escaped with the two captives, and landed in France. They regained their own possessions, and from that time lived a life of great piety.
Leaving St Valery, let us take a pleasant excursion to see the fine old feudal castle of Rambures. There is probably not a more perfect specimen of the military architecture of the middle ages in the whole of France. We walk round it and admire the four enormous brick towers rising at the angles of the quadrangular fortress, crowned with the roofs then so much in favour, resembling pepper-boxes. The walls, many yards in thickness, are pierced with embrasures; where we now stand they seem like a narrow slit; but when we enter, there is ample room for a man and horse to stand in them. Everything is prepared for a long defence: descending into the vaults, there are stables for a number of horses, ovens to bake bread for a regiment, wells, and store-rooms ready to contain any amount of provisions. Below these cold dark excavations are the still more melancholy oubliettes, a suitable name, where the prisoners were too often forgotten and allowed to die a lingering death of starvation. Here the lord of the place could without any trial confine his vassals who refused to grind their wheat at his mill, bake their bread at his bakehouse, or get in his harvest at the loss of their own. Such was the state of affairs in these olden times!
The shore-line takes us to the oldest hereditary fief of the French monarchy, a spot rendered interesting from its connection with Joan of Arc. A few houses, half-buried in sand, form what the people still persist in calling ‘the port and town of Crotoy,’ once so flourishing as the centre of commerce for the wines of the south and the wool and dye-woods of Spain, which were shipped off from here to the cloth-workers of Flanders. When it belonged to our kings Edward II. and III., the port dues amounted to no less than twelve hundred pounds, a very large sum for those days; now they are but thirty-two pounds a year. The honest hospitable fishermen are always ready to rescue any distressed ship driven on to the coast by storms. It is remembered that one of their race, whose name was Vandenthum, saved the Duc de Larochefoucauld. In the worst days of the Revolution, when it was a crime to bear a title, this most devoted of the adherents of Louis XVI. fled to Crotoy, in the hope of getting to England. Before getting into Vandenthum’s boat, the Duke gave his valet half of a card, the ace of hearts, saying: ‘When this good fisherman brings you the other half, I shall be safe on the other side; pray take it at once to my wife.’ The card was delivered; and every year after the Duke shewed his gratitude by making Vandenthum spend a fortnight with him, treating him in a princely manner, seating him at his side, and recognising him as his deliverer.
It was in the strong castle of this place where Joan of Arc was imprisoned in 1430. From Amiens came a priest to receive her confession and administer the sacrament; and many ladies and citizens from the same place, sympathising with her under her cruel treatment, visited her. Thanking them warmly and kissing them, she exclaimed, weeping: ‘These are good people; may it please God, when my days are ended, that I may be buried in this place.’ If you talk to the fishermen’s wives here, they speak of this heroic woman with profound respect; and singularly enough, the last branch of her family has settled among the people she loved. They are living in comparative poverty, having a place in the Custom-house, but are proud of the letters-patent which authorise them to adopt the name of Du Lis, and bear on their arms the fleur de lis of the Bourbons.
Six miles away we come to the once celebrated church of Rue, with a dismantled fortress, a belfry, clock tower, and gibbet of the olden times. St Wulphy was a saint of miracle-working power, and to him the church was dedicated; but in the incessant attacks of the Normans his relics were carried off. The saint still cared for his church, and prayed God to give his people something better; whereupon some workmen digging near Golgotha found buried in the earth a crucifix, sculptured by Nicodemus. This was set afloat at Jaffa in a boat without oars, sail, or pilot, and soon stranded on the shore of Rue. In the present day it is trade which turns villages into towns; then it was faith; wherever the relics of a saint were to be found, the most obscure place grew rapidly in riches and population. Thus pilgrims flocked to this out-of-the-way place from all parts of France; the popes granted indulgences to those who visited it, and it became a rival to St James of Compostella. Here was often found Louis XI., who had great need for desiring pardon, and miser though he was, left behind him rich presents. Of the fine old church nothing remains but a chapel, which is a masterpiece of architectural beauty; the legend of the bark is represented on the tympanum, and on the façade are statues of several of the kings of France. All its rich treasures and the miraculous cross were carried away at the end of the last century by the faithless dragoons of the Republican army.
Musing on the changes of time and public opinion, we look far away over the downs towards Abbeville, and under the shadow of the large forest which darkens the horizon, call to mind the great victory which the armies of England gained on the field of Crécy. Edward III. knew the country well, for his youthful days had been passed at the Château Gard-les-Rue, which belonged to his mother, Isabel of Ponthieu. Walking over the ground, the spots where the carnage was most terrible may be traced by the names given to tracts of land, such as the Marche à Carognes, meaning ‘The Pathway of Corpses.’ In the morning, when the fields are covered with dew, the deep ditches where the victims were buried may be distinctly traced, for there, curiously enough, the earth remains damp much longer than in the other furrows. Standing in the green forest-road is an old cross of sandstone, which the peasants tell you is the spot where the body of the king of Bohemia was found. He was one of the most faithful allies of the French king, and blind; but in the midst of the battle he desired his two faithful knights to lead his horse in, that he might strike one last blow for his friend. All the three fell together in front of the hill, from which the English archers drew their bow-strings with such fatal effect that ten thousand of the French were left dead on the battle-field. Here it was that the gallant Black Prince won his spurs, and the crest of feathers which still pertains to our Prince of Wales.