"C'est une grande dame, une princesse altière,Chacun de ses châteaux, marqué du sceau royal,Lui fait une toilette en dentelle de pierreEt son splendide fleuve un miroir de cristal."
"C'est une grande dame, une princesse altière,Chacun de ses châteaux, marqué du sceau royal,Lui fait une toilette en dentelle de pierreEt son splendide fleuve un miroir de cristal."
It is difficult to write appreciatively of Touraine without echoing the words of some one who has gone before, and it is likely that those who come after will find the task no easier.
Truly, as a seventeenth-century geographer has said: "Here is the most delicious and the most agreeable province of the kingdom. It has been named the garden of France because of the softness of its climate, the affability of its people, and the ease of its life."
The poets who have sung the praises of Touraine are many, Ronsard, Remy Belleau, Du Bellay, and for prose authors we have at the head, Rabelais, La Fontaine, Balzac, and Alfred de Vigny. Merely to enumerate them all wouldbe impossible, but they furnish a fund of quotable material for the traveller when he is writing home, and are equally useful to the maker of guide-books.
One false note on Touraine, only, has ever rung out in the world of literature, and that was from Stendahl, who said: "La Belle Touraine n'existe pas!" The pages of Alfred de Vigny and Balzac answer this emphatically, and to the contrary, and every returning traveller apparently sides with them and not with Stendahl.
How can one not love its prairies, gently sloping to the caressing Loire, its rolling hills and dainty ravines? The broad blue Loire is always vague and tranquil here, at least one seems always to see it so, but the beauty of Touraine is, after all, a quiet beauty which must be seen to be appreciated, and lived with to be loved.
It is a land of most singular attractions, neither too hot nor too cold, too dry nor too damp, with a sufficiency of rain, and an abundance of sunshine. Its market-gardens are prolific in their product, its orchards overflowing with plenitude, and its vineyards generous in their harvest.
Touraine is truly the region where one mayread history without books, with the very pages of nature punctuated and adorned with the marvels of the French Renaissance. Louis XI. gave the first impetus to the alliance of the great domestic edifice—which we have come to distinguish as the residential château—with the throne, and the idea was amplified by Charles VIII. and glorified by François Premier.
In the brilliant, if dissolute, times of the early sixteenth century François Premier and his court travelled down through this same Touraine to Loches and to Amboise, where François's late gaoler, Charles Quint, was to be received and entertained. It was after François had returned from his involuntary exile in Spain, and while he was still in residence at the Louvre, that the plans for the journey were made. To the Duchesse d'Étampes François said,—the duchess who was already more than a rival of both Diane and the Comtesse de Châteaubriant,—"I must tear myself away from you to-morrow. I shall await my brother Charles at Amboise on the Loire."
"Shall you not revenge yourself upon him, for his cruel treatment of you?" said the wily favourite of the time. "If he, like a fool,comes to Touraine, will you not make him revoke the treaty of Madrid or shut him up in one of Louis XI.'s oubliettes?"
"I will persuade him, if possible," said François, "but I shall never force him."
In due time François did receive his brother king at Amboise and it was amid great ceremony and splendour. His guest could not, or would not, mount steps, so that great inclined plane, up which a state coach and its horses might go, was built. Probably there was a good reason for the emperor's peculiarity, for that worthy or unworthy monarch finally died of gout in the monastery of San Juste.
The meeting here at Amboise was a grand and ceremonious affair and the Spanish monarch soon came to recognize a possible enemy in the royal favourite, Anne de Pisselieu. The emperor's eyes, however, melted with admiration, and he told her that only in France could one see such a perfection of elegance and beauty, with the result that—as is popularly adduced—the susceptible, ambitious, and unfaithful duchess betrayed François more than once in the affairs attendant upon the subsequent wars between France, England, and Spain.
From Touraine, in the sixteenth century,spread that influence which left its impress even on the capital of the kingdom itself, not only in respect to architectural art, but in manners and customs as well.
Whatever may be the real value of the Renaissance as an artistic expression, the discussion of it shall have no place here, beyond the qualifying statement that what we have come to know as the French Renaissance—which undeniably grew up from a transplanted Italian germ—proved highly tempting to the mediæval builder for all manner of edifices, whereas it were better if it had been confined to civic and domestic establishments and left the church pure in its full-blown Gothic forms.
Curiously enough, here in Touraine, this is just what did happen. The Renaissance influence crept into church-building here and there—and it is but a short step from the "gothique rayonnant" to what are recognized as well-defined Renaissance features; but it is more particularly in respect to the great châteaux, and even smaller dwellings, that the superimposed Italian details were used. A notable illustration of this is seen in the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours. It is very beautiful and has some admirable Gothic features, but there are occasional constructive details, aswell as those for decorative effect alone, which are decidedly not good Gothic; but, as they are, likewise, not Renaissance, they hence cannot be laid to its door, but rather to the architect's eccentricity.
In the smaller wayside churches, such as one sees at Cormery, at Cheverny, and at Cour-Cheverny, there is scarcely a sign of Renaissance, while their neighbouring châteaux are nothing else, both in construction and in decoration.
The Château de Langeais is, for the most part, excellent Gothic, and so is the church near by. Loches has distinct and pure Gothic details both in its church and its château, quite apart from the Hôtel de Ville and that portion of the château now used as the Sous-Préfecture, which are manifestly Renaissance; hence here in Touraine steps were apparently taken to keep the style strictly non-ecclesiastical.
A glance of the eye at the topography of this fair province stamps it at once as something quite different from any other traversed by the Loire. Two of the great "routes nationales" cross it, the one via Orleans, leading to Nantes, and the other via Chartres, going to Bordeaux. It is crossed and recrossed by innumerable "routes secondaires," "départementales,""vicinales" and "particulières," second to none of their respective classes in other countries, for assuredly the roads of France are the best in the world. Many of these great ways of communication replaced the ancient Roman roads, which were the pioneers of the magnificent roadways of the France of to-day.
Almost invariably Touraine is flat or rolling, its highest elevation above the sea being but a hundred and forty-six metres, scarce four hundred and fifty feet, a fact which accounts also for the gentle flow of the Loire through these parts.
All the fruits of the southland are found here, the olive alone excepted. Mortality, it is said, and proved by figures, is lower than in any other part of France, and for this reason many dwellers in the large cities, if they may not all have a mediæval château, have at least a villa, far away from "the madding crowd," and yet within four hours' travel of the capital itself.
The Loire in Touraine
Touraine, properly speaking, has no natural frontiers, as it is not enclosed by rivers or mountains. It is, however, divided by the Loire into two distinct regions, the Méridionale and the Septentrionale; but the dress, the physiognomy, the language, and the predilections of the people are everywhere the same, though the two sections differ somewhat in temperament. In the south, the Tourangeau is timid and obliging, but more or less engrossed in his affairs; in the north, he is proud, egotistical, and a little arrogant, but, above all, he likes his ease and comfort, something after the manner of "mynheer" of Holland.
These are the characteristics which are enumerated by Stanislas Bellanger of Tours, in "La Touraine Ancienne et Moderne," and they are traceable to-day, in every particular, to one who knows well the by-paths of the region.
Formerly the peasant was, in his own words, "sous la main de M. le comte," but, with the coming of the eighteenth century, all this was changed, and the conditions which, in England, succeeded feudalism, are unknown in Touraine, as indeed throughout France.
The two great divisions which nature had made of Touraine were further cut up into fivepetits pays; les Varennes, le Veron, la Champeigne, la Brenne, and les Gâtines; names which exist on some maps to-day, but which have lost, in a great measure, their former distinction.
There is a good deal to be said in favour of the physical and moral characteristics of the inhabitants of Touraine. Just as the descendants of the Phoceans, the original settlers of Marseilles, differ from the natives of other parts of France, so, too, do the Tourangeaux differ from the inhabitants of other provinces. The people of Touraine are a mixture of Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Alains, Normans and Bretons, Anglais and Gaulois; but all have gradually been influenced by local conditions, so that the native of Touraine has become a distinct variety all by himself. The deliciousness of the "garden of France" has altered him so that he stands to-day as more distinctly French than the citizen of Paris itself.
Touraine, too, has the reputation of being that part of France where is spoken the purest French. This, perhaps, is as true of the Blaisois, for the local bookseller at Blois will tell one with the most dulcet and understandable enunciation that it is at Blois that one hears the best accent. At any rate, it is something found within a charmed circle, of perhaps a hundred miles in diameter, that does not find its exact counterpart elsewhere. As Seville stands for the Spanish tongue, Florence forthe Italian, and Dresden for the German, so Tours stands for the French.
The history of the Loire in Touraine, as is the case at Le Puy, at Nevers, at Sancerre, or at Orleans, is abundant and vivid, and the monuments which line its banks are numerous and varied, from the fortress-château of Amboise to the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours with its magnificent bejewelled façade. The ruined towers of the castle of Cinq-Mars, with its still more ancient Roman "pile," and the feudal châteaux of the countryside are all eloquent, even to-day, in their appeal to all lovers of history and romance.
There are some verses, little known, in praise of the Loire, as it comes through Touraine, written by Houdon des Landes, who lived near Tours in the eighteenth century. The following selection expresses their quality well and is certainly worthy to rank with the best that Balzac wrote in praise of his beloved Touraine.
"La Loire enorgueillit ses antiques cités,Et courounne ses bords de coteaux enchantés;Dans ses vallons heureux, sur ses rives aimées,Les prés ont déployé leurs robes parfumées;Le saule humide et souple y lance ses rameaux.Ses coteaux sont peuplés, et le rocher docileA l'homme qui le creuse offre un champêtre asile.De notre vieille Gaule, ô fleuve paternel!Fleuve des doux climats! la Vallière et SorelSur tes bords fortunés naquirent, et la gloireA l'une dût l'amour, à l'autre la victoire."
"La Loire enorgueillit ses antiques cités,Et courounne ses bords de coteaux enchantés;Dans ses vallons heureux, sur ses rives aimées,Les prés ont déployé leurs robes parfumées;Le saule humide et souple y lance ses rameaux.Ses coteaux sont peuplés, et le rocher docileA l'homme qui le creuse offre un champêtre asile.De notre vieille Gaule, ô fleuve paternel!Fleuve des doux climats! la Vallière et SorelSur tes bords fortunés naquirent, et la gloireA l'une dût l'amour, à l'autre la victoire."
Again and again Balzac's words echo in one's ears from his "Scène de la Vie de Province." The following quotations are typical of the whole:
"The softness of the air, the beauty of the climate, all tend to a certain ease of existence and simplicity of manner which encourages an appreciation of the arts."
"Touraine is a land to foster the ambition of a Napoleon and the sentiment of a Byron."
Another writer, A. Beaufort, a publicist of the nineteenth century, wrote:
"The Tourangeaux resemble the good Adam in the garden of Eden. They drink, they eat, they sleep and dream, and care not what their neighbour may be doing."
Touraine was indeed, at one time, a veritable Eden, though guarded by fortresses,hallebardes, and arquebuses, but not the less an Eden for all that. In addition it was a land where, in the middle ages, the seigneurs made history, almost without a parallel in France or elsewhere.
Touraine, truly enough, was the centre of theold French monarchy in the perfection of its pomp and state; but it is also true that Touraine knew little of the serious affairs of kings, though some all-important results came from events happening within its borders.
Paris was the law-making centre in the sixteenth century, and Touraine knew only the domestic life and pleasures of royalty. Etiquette, form, and ceremony were all relaxed, or at least greatly modified, and the court spent in the country what it had levied in the capital.
Curiously enough, the monarchs were omnipotent and influential here, though immediately they quartered themselves in Paris their powers waned considerably; indeed, they seemed to lose their influence upon ministers and vassals alike.
Louis XIII., it is true, tried to believe that Paris was France,—like the Anglo-Saxon tourists who descend upon it in such great numbers to-day,—and built Versailles; but there was never much real glory about its cold and pompous walls.
The fortunes of the old châteaux of Touraine have been most varied. Chambord is vast and bare, elegant and pompous; Blois, just across the border, is a tourist sight of the first rank whose salamanders and porcupines have beenwell cared for by the paternal French government. Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau, and half a dozen others are still inhabited, and are gay with the life of twentieth-century luxury; Amboise is a possession of the Orleans family; Loches is, in part, given over to the uses of a sous-préfecture; and Chinon's châteaux are but half-demolished ruins. Besides these there are numerous smaller residential châteaux of the nobility scattered here and there in the Loire watershed.
There have been writers who have sought to commiserate with "the poor peasant of Touraine," as they have been pleased to think of him, and have deplored the fact that his sole possession was a small piece of ground which he and his household cultivated, and that he lived in a little whitewashed house, built with his own hands, or those of his ancestors. Though the peasant of Touraine, as well as of other parts of the countryside, works for an absurdly small sum, and for considerably less than his brother nearer Paris, he sells his produce at the nearest market-town for a fair price, and preserves a spirit of independence which is as valuable as are some of the things which are thrust upon him in some other landsunder the guise of benevolent charity, really patronage of a most demeaning and un-moral sort. At night the Touraine peasant returns to his own hearthstone conscious that he is a man like all of his fellows, and is not a mere atom ground between the upper and nether millstones of the landlord and the squire. He cooks his "bouillie" over three small sticks and retires to rest with the fond hope that on the next market-day following the prices of eggs, chickens, cauliflowers, or tomatoes may be higher. He is the stuff that successful citizens are made of, and is not to be pitied in the least, even though it is only the hundredth man of his community who ever does rise to more wealth than a mere competency.
Touraine, rightly enough, has been called the garden of France, but it is more than that, much more; it is a warm, soft land where all products of the soil take on almost a subtropical luxuriance. Besides the great valley of the Loire, there are the valleys of the tributaries which run into it, in Touraine and the immediate neighbourhood, all of which are fertile as only a river-bottom can be. It is true that there are numerous formerly arid and sandy plateaux, quite unlike the abundant plains of La Beauce, though to-day, by care and skill,they have been made to rival the rest of the region in productiveness.
The Département d'Indre et Loire is the richest agricultural region in all France so far as the variety and abundance of its product goes, rivalling in every way the opulence of the Burgundian hillsides. Above all, Touraine stands at the head of the vine-culture of all the Loire valley, theterritoire vinicolelapping over into Anjou, where are produced the celebratedvins blancsof Saumur.
The vineyard workers of Touraine, in the neighbourhood of Loches, have clung closely to ancient customs, almost, one may say, to the destruction of the industry, though of late new methods have set in, and, since the blight now some years gone by, a new prosperity has come.
The day worker, who cares for the vines and superintends the picking of the grapes by the womenfolk and the children, works for two francs fifty centimes per day; but he invariably carries with him to the scene of his labours a couple of cutlets from a young and juicybrebis, or even apoulet rôti, so one may judge from this that his pay is ample for his needs in this land of plenty.
The Vintage in TouraineThe Vintage in Touraine
The Vintage in Touraine
In the morning he takes his bowl of soup and a cup of white wine, and of course huge hunksof bread, and finally coffee, and on each Sunday he has hisrôti à la maison. All this demonstrates the fact that the French peasant is more of a meat eater in these parts than he is commonly thought to be.
Touraine has no peculiar beauties to offer the visitor; there is nothingoutréabout it to interest one; but, rather, it wins by sheer charm alone, or perhaps a combination of charms and excellencies makes it so truly a delectable land.
The Tourangeaux themselves will tell you, when speaking of Rabelais and Balzac, that it is the land of "haute graisse, féconde et spirituelle." It is all this, and, besides its spirituelle components, it will supply some very real and substantial comforts. It is the Eden of the gourmandiser of such delicacies astruffes,rilettes, and above all,pruneaux, which you get in one form or another at nearly every meal. Most of the good things of life await one here in abundance, with kitchen-gardens and vineyards at every one's back door. Truly Touraine is a land of good living.
Life runs its course in Touraine, "facile et bonne," without any extremes of joy or sorrow, without chimerical desires or infinite despair, and the agreeable sensations of life predominate,—the first essential to real happiness.
Some one has said, and certainly not without reason, that every Frenchman has a touch of Rabelais and of Voltaire in his make-up. This is probably true, for France has never been swept by a wave of puritanism such as has been manifest in most other countries, andle gros rireis still the national philosophy.
In a former day a hearty laugh, or at least an amused cynicism, diverted the mind of the martyr from threatened torture and even violent death. Brinvilliers laughed at those who were to torture her to death, and De la Barre and Danton cracked jokes and improvised puns upon the very edge of their untimely graves.
Touraine has the reputation of being a wonderfully productive field for the book collector, though with books, like many other treasures of a past time, the day has passed when one may "pick up" for two sous a MS. worth as many thousands of francs; but still bargains are even now found, and if one wants great calf-covered tomes, filled with fine old engravings, bearing on the local history of thepays, he can generally find them at all prices here in old Touraine.
There was a more or less apocryphal storytold us and the landlady of our inn concerning a find which a guest had come upon in a little roadside hamlet at which he chanced to stop. He was one of those omnipresentcommis voyageurswho thread the French provinces up and down, as no other country in the world is "travelled" or "drummed." He was the representative for a brandy shipper, one of those substantial houses of the cognac region whose product is mostly sold only in France; but this fact need not necessarily put the individual very far down in the social scale. Indeed, he was a most amiable and cultivated person.
Our fellow traveller had come to a village where all the available accommodations of the solitary inn were already engaged; therefore he was obliged to put up with a room in the town, which the landlord hunted out for him. Repairing to his room without any thought save that of sleep, the traveller woke the next morning to find the sun streaming through the opaqueness of a brilliantly coloured window. Not stained glass here, surely, thought the stranger, for his lodging was a most humble one. It proved to be not glass at all; merely four great vellum leaves, taken from some ancient tome and stuck into the window-framingwhere the glass ought to have been. Daylight was filtering dimly through the rich colouring, and it took but a moment to become convinced that the sheets were something rare and valuable. He learned that the pages were from an old Latin MS., and that the occupant of the little dwelling had used "the paper" in the place of the glass which had long since disappeared. The vellum and its illuminations had stood the weather well, though somewhat dimmed in comparison with the brilliancy of the remaining folios, which were found below-stairs. There were in all some eighty pages, which were purchased for a modest forty sous, and everybody satisfied.
The volume had originally been found by the father of the old dame who then had possession of it in an old château in revolutionary times. Whether her honoured parent was a pillager or a protector did not come out, but for all these years the possession of this fine work meant no more to this Tourangelle than a supply of "paper" for stopping up broken window-panes.
"She parted readily enough with the remaining leaves," said our Frenchman, "but nothing would induce her to remove those which filled the window." "No, we have no moreglass, and these have answered quite well for a long time now," she said. And such is the simplicity of the French provincial, even to-day—sometimes.
As one approaches Amboise, he leaves the comparatively insalubrious plain of the Sologne and the Blaisois and enters Touraine.
Amboise! What history has been made there; what a wealth of action its memories recall, and what splendour, gaiety, and sadness its walls have held! An entire book might be written about the scenes which took place under its roof.
To-day most travellers are content to rush over its apartments, gaze at its great round tower, view the Loire, which is here quite at its best, from the battlements, and, after a brief admiration of the wonderfully sculptured portal of its chapel, make their way to Chenonceaux, or to the gay little metropolis of Tours.
Château d'AmboiseChâteau d'Amboise
Château d'Amboise
No matter whither one turns his steps from Amboise, he will not soon forget this great fortress-château and the memories of thepetite bandeof blondes and brunettes who followed in the wake of François Premier.
Here, and at Blois, the recollections of this little band are strong in the minds of students of romance and history. Some one has said that along the corridors of Amboise one still may meet the wraiths of those who in former days went airily from one pleasure to another, but this of course depends upon the mood and sentiment of the visitor.
Amboise has a very good imitation of the climate of the south, and the glitter of the Loire at midday in June is about as torrid a picture as one can paint in a northern clime. It is not that it is so very hot in degree, but that the lack of shade-trees along its quays gives Amboise a shimmering resemblance to a much warmer place than it really is. The Loire is none too ample here, and frets its way, as it does through most of its lower course, through banks of sand and pebbles in a more or less vain effort to look cool.
Amboise is old, for, under the name of Ambatia, it existed in the fourth century, at which epoch St. Martin, the patron of Tours, threw down a pagan pyramidal temple here and established Christianity; and Clovis and Alaric held their celebrated meeting on the Ile St. Jean in 496. It was not long after this, according to the ancient writers, that some sortof a fortified château took form here. Louis-le-Bègue gave Amboise to the Counts of Anjou, and Hughes united the two independent seigneuries of the château and the bourg. After the Counts of Anjou succeeded the Counts of Berry, Charles VII., by appropriation, confiscation, seizure, or whatever you please to call it,—history is vague as to the real motive,—united Amboise to the possessions of the Crown in 1434. Louis XI. lived for a time at this strong fortress-château, before he turned his affections so devotedly to Plessis-les-Tours. Charles VIII. was born and died here, and it was he who added the Renaissance details, or at least the first of them, upon his return from Italy. Indeed, it is to him and to the nobles who followed in his train during his Italian travels that the introduction of the Renaissance into France is commonly attributed.
It was at Amboise that Charles VIII., forgetful of the miseries of his Italian campaign, set about affairs of state with a renewed will and vigour. He was personally superintending some alterations in the old castle walls, and instructing the workmen whom he brought from Italy with him as to just how far they might introduce those details which the world has come to know as Renaissance, when, inpassing beneath a low overhanging beam, he struck his head so violently that he expired almost immediately (April 17, 1498).
Louis XII., the superstitious, lived here for some time, and here occurred some of the most important events in the life of the great François, the real popularizer of the new architectural Renaissance.
It was in the old castle of Amboise, the early home of Louis XII., that his appointed successor, his son-in-law and second cousin, François, was brought up. Here he was educated by his mother, Louise de Savoie, Duchesse d'Angoulême, together with that bright and shining light, that Marguerite who was known as the "Pearl of the Valois," poetess, artist, and court intriguer. Here the household formed what in the early days François himself was pleased to call a "trinity of love."
Throughout the structure may yet be seen the suggestions of François's artistic instincts, traced in the window-framings of the façade, in the interior decorations of the long gallery, and on the terrace hanging high above the Loire.
In the park and in the surrounding forest François and his sister Marguerite passed many happy days of their childhood. Marguerite, who had already become known as the "tenth muse," had already thought out her "Heptameron," whilst François tried his prentice hand at love-rhyming, an expression of sentiment which at a later period took the form of avowals in person to his favourites.
One recalls those stanzas to the memory of Agnes Sorel, beginning:
"Gentille Agnès plus de loz tu mérite,La cause était de France recouvrir;Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrirClose nonnaine? ou bien dévot hermite?"
"Gentille Agnès plus de loz tu mérite,La cause était de France recouvrir;Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrirClose nonnaine? ou bien dévot hermite?"
François was more than a lover of the beautiful. His appreciation of architectural art amounted almost to a passion, and one might well claim him as a member of the architectural guild, although, in truth, he was nothing more than a generous patron of the craftsmen of his day.
François was the real father of the French Renaissance, the more splendid flower which grew from the Italian stalk. He had no liking for the Van Eycks and Holbeins of the Dutch school, reserving his favour for the frankly languid masters from the south. He brought from Italy Cellini, Primaticcio, and the great Leonardo, who it is said had a hand in thatwonderful shell-like spiral stairway in the château at Blois.
By just what means Da Vinci was inveigled from Italy will probably never be known. The art-loving François visited Milan, and among its curiosities was shown the even then celebrated "Last Supper" of Leonardo. The next we know is that, "François repasse les Alpes ayant avec lui Mon Sieur Lyonard, son peintre." Leonardo was given a pension of sevenecus de Franceper year and a residence near Amboise. Vasari recounts very precisely how Leonardo expired in the arms of his kingly patron at Amboise, but on the other hand, the court chronicles have said that François was at St. Germain on that day. Be this as it may, the intimacy was a close one, and we may be sure that François felt keenly the demise of this most celebrated painter of his court.
It was during those early idyllic days at Amboise that the character of François was formed, and the marvel is that the noble and endearing qualities did not exceed the baser ones. To be sure his after lot was hard, and his real and fancied troubles many, and they were not made the less easy to bear because of his numerous female advisers.
In his youth at Amboise his passions stillslumbered, but when they did awaken, they burst forth with an unquenchable fury. Meantime he was working off any excess of imagination by boar-hunts and falconry in the neighbouring forest of Chanteloup, and had more than one hand-to-hand affray with resentful citizens of the town, when he encroached upon what they considered their traditional preserves. So he grew to man's estate, but the life that he lived in his youth under the kingly roof of the château at Amboise gave him the benefits of all the loyalty which his fellows knew, and it helped him carry out the ideas which were bequeathed to him by his uncle.
It was at a sitting of the court at Amboise, when François was still under his mother's wing,—at the age of twenty only,—that the Bourbon affair finally came to its head. Many notables were mixed up in it as partisans of the ungrateful and ambitious Bourbon, Charles de Montpensier, Connétable de France. It was an office only next in power to that of the sovereign himself, and one which had been allowed to die out in the reign of Louis XI. The final outcome of it all was that François became a prisoner at Pavia, through the treachery of the Connétable and his followers, who went overen masseto François's rival, Charles V., who, as Charles II., was King of Spain.
Of the subsequent meeting with the Emperor Charles on French soil, François said to the Duchesse d'Étampes: "It is with regret that I leave you to meet the emperor at Amboise on the Loire." And he added: "You will follow me with the queen." His queen at this time was poor Eleanor of Portugal, herself a Spanish princess, Claude of France, his first wife, having died. "These two," says Brantôme, "were the only virtuous women of his household."
The Emperor Charles was visibly affected by the meeting, though, it is true, he had no love for his old enemy, François. Perhaps it was on account of the duchess, for whom François had put aside Diane. At any rate, the emperor was gallant enough to say to her: "It is only in France that I have seen such a perfection of elegance and beauty. My brother, your king, should be the envy of all the sovereigns of Europe. Had I such a captive at my palace in Madrid, there were no ransom that I would accept for her."
François cared not for the lonely Spanish princess whom he had made his queen; but he was somewhat susceptible to the charms ofhis daughter-in-law, Catherine de Medici, the wife of his son Henri, who, when at Amboise, was his ever ready companion in the chase.
François was inordinately fond of the hunt, and made of it a most strenuous pastime, full of danger and of hard riding in search of the boar and the wolf, which abounded in the thick underwood in the neighbourhood. One wonders where they, or, rather, their descendants, have disappeared, since nought in these days but a frightened hare, a partridge, or perhaps a timid deer ever crosses one's path, as he makes his way by the smooth roads which cross and recross the forest behind Amboise.
When François II. was sixteen he became the nominal king of France. To Amboise he and his young bride came, having been brought thither from Blois, for fear of the Huguenot rising. The court settled itself forthwith at Amboise, where the majestic feudal castle piled itself high up above the broad, limpid Loire, feeling comparatively secure within the protection of its walls. Here the Loire had widened to the pretensions of a lake, the river being spanned by a bridge, which crossed it by the help of the island, as it does to-day.
Over this old stone bridge the court approached the castle, the retinue brilliant withall the trappings of a luxurious age, archers, pages, and men-at-arms. The king and his new-found bride, the winsome Mary Stuart, rode well in the van. In their train were Catherine, the "queen-mother" of three kings, the Cardinal de Lorraine, the Duc de Guise, the Duc de Nemours, and a vast multitude of gay retainers, who were moved about from place to place like pawns upon the chess-board, and with about as much consideration.
The gentle Mary Stuart, born in 1542, at Linlithgow, in stern Caledonia, of a French mother,—Marie de Lorraine,—was doomed to misfortune, for her father, the noble James V., prophesied upon his death-bed that the dynasty would end with his daughter.
At the tender age of five Mary was sent to France and placed in a convent. Her education was afterward continued at court under the direction of her uncle, the Cardinal de Lorraine. By ten she had become well versed in French, Latin, and Italian, and at one time, according to Brantôme, she gave a discourse on literature and the liberal arts—so flourishing at the time—before the king and his court. Ronsard was her tutor in versification, which became one of her favourite pursuits.
Mary Stuart's charms were many. She wastall and finely formed, with auburn hair shining like an aureole above her intellectual forehead, and with a skin of such dazzling whiteness—a trite saying, but one which is used by Brantôme—"that it outrivalled the whiteness of her veil."
In the spring of 1558, when she was but sixteen, Mary Stuart was married to the Dauphin, the weak, sickly François II., himself but a youth. He was, however, sincerely and deeply fond of his young wife.
Unexpectedly, through the death of Henri II. at the hands of Montgomery at that ever debatable tournament, François II. ascended the throne of France, and Mary Stuart saw herself exalted to the dizzy height which she had not so soon expected. She became the queen of two kingdoms, and, had the future been more propitious, the whole map of Europe might have been changed.
Disease had marked the unstable François for its own, and within a year he passed from the throne to the grave, leaving his young queen a widow and an orphan.
Shortly afterward "la reine blanche" returned to her native Scotland, bidding France that long, last, sad adieu so often quoted:
"Farewell, beloved France, to thee!Best native land,The cherished strandThat nursed my tender infancy!Farewell my childhood's happy day!The bark, which bears me thus away,Bears but the poorer moiety hence,The nobler half remains with thee,I leave it to thy confidence,But to remind thee still of me!"
"Farewell, beloved France, to thee!Best native land,The cherished strandThat nursed my tender infancy!Farewell my childhood's happy day!The bark, which bears me thus away,Bears but the poorer moiety hence,The nobler half remains with thee,I leave it to thy confidence,But to remind thee still of me!"
The young sovereigns had had a most stately suite of apartments prepared for them at Amboise, the lofty windows reaching from floor to ceiling and overlooking the river and the vast terrace where was so soon to be enacted that bloody drama to which they were to be made unwilling witnesses.
This gallery was wainscoted with old oak and hung with rich leathers, and the lofty ceiling was emblazoned with heraldic emblems and monograms, as was the fashion of the day. Brocades and tapestries, set in great gold frames, lined the walls, and, in a boudoir or retiring-room beyond, still definitely to be recognized, was a remarkable series of embroidered wall decorations, a tapestry of flowers and fruits with an arabesque border of white and gold, truly a queenly apartment, and one that well became the luxurious and daintyMary, who came from Scotland to marry the youthful François.
Mary Stuart knew little at the time as to why they had so suddenly removed from Blois, but François soon told her, something after this wise: "Our mother," said he, "is deeply concerned with affairs of state. There is some conspiracy against her and your uncles, the Guises."
"Tell me," she demanded, "concerning this dreadful conspiracy."
"Were you not suspicious," he asked, querulously, "when we left for Amboise so suddenly?"
"Ah, non, mon François, methought that we came here to hold a jousting tourney and to hunt in the forest...."
"Well, at any rate, we are secure here from Turk, or Jew, or Huguenot, my queen," replied the king.
Within a short space a council was called in the great hall of Amboise, which the Huguenot chiefs, Condé, Coligny, the Cardinal de Chatillon,—who appears to have been a sort of a religious renegade,—were requested to attend. A conciliatory edict was to be prepared, and signed by the king, as a measure for gainingtime and learning further the plans of the conspirators.
This edict ultimately was signed, but it was in force but a short time and was a subterfuge which the youthful king deep in his heart—and he publicly avowed the fact—deeply resented. Furthermore it did practically nothing toward quelling the conspiracy.
Through the plains of Touraine and over the hills from Anjou the conspirators came in straggling bands, to rendezvous for a greatcoup de mainat Amboise. They halted at farms and hid in vineyards, but the royalists were on the watch and one after another the wandering bands were captured and held for a bloody public massacre when the time should become ripe. In all, two thousand or more were captured, including Jean Barri de la Renaudie. This man was the leader, but he was merely a bold adventurer, seeking his own advantage, and caring little what cause employed his peculiar talents. This was his last affair, however, for his corpse soon hung in chains from Amboise's bridge. Condé, Coligny, and the other Calvinists soon learned that the edict was not worth the paper on which it was written.
After the two thousand had been dispersedor captured the "queen-mother" threw off the mask. She led the trembling child-king and queen toward the southern terrace, where, close beneath the windows of the château, was built a scaffold, covered with black cloth, before which stood the executioner clothed in scarlet. The prisoners were ranged by hundreds along the outer rampart, guarded by archers and musketeers. The windows of the royal apartment were open and here the company placed themselves to witness the butchery to follow.
Speechless with horror sat the young king and queen, until finally, as another batch of mutilated corpses were thrown into the river below, the young queen swooned.
"My mother," said François, "I, too, am overcome by this horrible sight. I crave your Highness's permission to retire; the blood of my subjects, even of my enemies, is too horrible to contemplate."
"My son," said the bloodthirsty Catherine, "I command you to stay. Duc de Guise, support your niece, the Queen of France. Teach her her duty as a sovereign. She must learn how to govern those hardy Scots of hers."
It was on the very terraced platform on which one walks to-day that, between two ranksofhallebardiersand arquebusiers, moved that long line of bareheaded and bowed men whose prayers went up to heaven while they awaited the fate of the gallows.
Either the cord or the sword-blade quickly accounted for the lives of this multitude, and their blood flowed in rivulets, while above in the gallery the willing and unwilling onlookers were gay with laughter or dumb with sadness.
When all this horrible murdering was over the Loire was literally a reeking mass of corpses, if we are to believe the records of the time. The chief conspirators were hung in chains from the castle walls, or from the bridge, and the balustrades which overhang the street, which to-day flanks the Loire beneath the castle walls, were filled with a ribald crew of jeering partisans who knew little and cared less for religion of any sort.
Some days after the execution of the Calvinists the "Protestant poet" and historian passed through the royal city with hisprécepteurand his father, and was shown the rows of heads planted upon pikes, which decorated the castle walls, and thereupon vowed, if not to avenge, at least to perpetuate the infamy in prose and verse, and this he did most effectually.
An odorous garden of roses, lilacs, honeysuckle, and hawthorn framed the joyous architecture of the château, then as now, in adorable fashion; but it could not purify the malodorous reputation which it had received until the domain was ceded by Louis XIV. to the Duc de Penthièvre and made aduché-pairie.
It would be possible to say much more, but this should suffice to stamp indelibly the fact that Touraine, in general, and the château of Amboise, in particular, cradled as much of the thought and action of the monarchy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as did the capital itself. At any rate the memory of it all is so vivid, and the tangible monuments of the splendour and intrigue of the court of those days are so very numerous and magnificent, that one could not forget the parts they played—once having seen them—if he would.
After the assassination of the Duc de Guise at Blois, Amboise became a prison of state, where were confined the Cardinal de Bourbon and César de Vendôme (the sons of Henri IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrées), also Fouquet and Lauzun. In 1762 the château was given by Louis XV. to the Duc de Choiseul, and the great Napoleon turned it over to his ancient colleague, Roger Ducos, who apparently caredlittle for its beauties or associations, for he mutilated it outrageously.