Looking backward dispassionately over this 'centennial record' of two considerable estates in the Department of the Aisne, what advantages, social, political, or economical, can be shown to have enured to the people of the commune of Anizy and of Pinon from the revolutionary processes to which those estates were subjected a hundred years ago? Not a man in Anizy or in Pinon owns a rood of land now which he might not just as easily have owned had the alienation of the Church property in those communes been conducted through the gradual and systematic processes of law and order. Instead of one remarkable and interesting château, these communes would now possess two, each in the natural course of things, a centre of local activity and civilisation. Instead of one ancient church, much despoiled and damaged, Anizy would now possess three such churches, each in its own way an object of interest to architects and artists, and it would be possible for an honest gendarme or a poor labourer on the highway to hear mass, if he liked, in any one of them, without incurring the wrath of his superiors and the loss of his daily bread.
CHAPTER X
IN THE AISNE—continued
Laon
The lofty hill on which the Sires de Coucy planted their chief fortress rises above the fields and forests of the Soissonnais as the Mont St.-Michel rises above the waves and the sands of the Norman coast.
The narrow streets and quaint old houses of the little town of Coucy-le-Château are huddled around the outworks of the colossal castle, almost as closely as are the climbing streets and the terraced houses of St.-Michel around the martial monastery; and each of these two places is, in its own kind, unique.
I had been strongly recommended to pass the night when I visited the château, not in the little city itself, though it boasts a 'Hôtel des Ruines,' but at a little wayside inn, rather indeed a restaurant and a baiting-place for travellers by the highway than an inn, which stands at the foot of the hill of Coucy. I took the advice, and had no cause to repent it. The walk up the hill, of some two miles, to the tower and the castle was simply delightful on a fine afternoon in June. Opposite my little inn is a small and rather dilapidated château of the eighteenth century, which originally must have been a very pleasant residence; and in the extensive meadows about it were grazing a number of fine cattle, the property of M. de Vaublanche. 'He is the only man hereabouts who takes any trouble with his beasts,' said my cheery, athletic young host, and leading the way for me into the meadows, he pointed out the princes of the herd, all of them really fine animals of the best French breeds, with as much pride as if he had been the owner. 'It gives more pleasure to see these—does it not, sir?—than to look at yonder dead chimney,' he said, pointing to some extensive sugarworks, all closed and deserted, on the other side of the road. The sugar crisis has been very sharp here, as in other parts of France, and many smokeless chimneys are to be seen here as in other departments.
An embattled gateway of the thirteenth century welcomes the traveller now with its open arch as he approaches the town of Coucy, and the best views of the château are to be got from the road as you climb up the long ascent.
In the quaint little town the house is still carefully preserved, and the chamber itself religiously kept in order, in which, on June 7, 1594, Gabrielle d'Estrées gave birth to a son destined afterwards to make his mark in the military annals of France as César, Duc de Vendôme. An inscription on a tablet in the wall thus commemorates his advent into the world: 'In this chamber was born, and in the chamber above was baptized, the legitimised son of France, de Vendôme, a prince of very good hopes, the child of the most Christian, most magnanimous, most invincible, and most clement King of France and of Navarre, Henry IV., and of Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchesse de Beaufort.'