Part 9

Their opposition, though unavailing, was not at all less spirited in the following reign, when they were compelled, in common with the rest of France, to acknowledge the power of the fifth Henry. But they again disengaged themselves from the English crown in 1431, after having remained in subjugation to it for eleven years; and the subsequent siege, conducted by Talbot himself in person, in 1442, only added to their military character. During this siege, which was of great length, the English general erected the formidable fortress, known by the name of the Bastille, in the suburb of Pollet. The following year saw the French become in their turn the assailants: Louis II. then dauphin, joined the troops of the Comte de Dunois in Dieppe, and the Bastille fell, after a most murderous attack. It was afterwards levelled with the ground in 1689, though, at a period of one hundred and twenty years after it was originally taken and dismantled, it had again been made a place of strength by the Huguenots, and was still farther fortified under Henry IV. The pious dauphin, who ascribed the capture of this almost impregnable castle to the especial grace of the Virgin Mary, would not quit Dieppe without leaving behind him an equally signal mark of gratitude on his part. He accordingly repaired in person to the church of St. James, there to place the town under her especial protection; and, not content with this, he instituted the Guild of the Assumption, charging the members annually to commemorate the day of their deliverance by a solemn festival.[68]

After this time, Dieppe appears to have been exposed to no farther calamities from warfare, except what it suffered, in common with a great part of France, during the religious troubles, and also excepting the bombardment by the English fleet in 1694. From the earliest rise of Calvinism in France, the inhabitants of Dieppe had distinguished themselves in favor of the reformation; and they were already prepared to go to the utmost lengths in its support, when John Knox, one of the most devoted apostles of the new faith, landed there in 1560, on his way from Scotland to Geneva. The presence of such a man produced the effect which might naturally be expected, of kindling the spark into a flame; and Dieppe continued for two years in open rebellion to the court. The inhabitants, in 1562, alarmed by the capture of Rouen, consented to receive a garrison from our Queen Elizabeth, rather than submit to renounce their creed; but they were obliged, in the course of the same year, to surrender to the royal troops. Notwithstanding all this, the Protestants of Dieppe, through the wisdom and moderation of the governor, escaped unhurt from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The town was nevertheless one of the first in France to declare, in 1589, for Henry IV. when, pursued by the victorious forces of the league, he sought shelter in these walls, and here collected the handful of troops, with which he almost immediately afterwards gained the important victory of Arques. The same prince also retired hither three years subsequently, and remained ten days in the midst of _ses bons Dieppois_, as he was in the habit of styling them, to be cured of the wounds received in the battle of Aumale.

Among the various royal personages, with whose presence Dieppe has been honored on different occasions, were Mary of Guise, widow of James V. of Scotland, and mother to the unfortunate princess of the same name, who succeeded her on the Scottish throne. She landed here in 1549, and was immediately joined by Henry II. who was at that time at Rouen. In 1564, Catherine of Médicis came hither, attended by her son, Charles IX. with a view of healing the wounds occasioned by the religious dissentions; and, in 1618, Louis XIII. after holding an assembly of the states of Normandy at the capital of the duchy, repaired to Dieppe, to visit one of the most important sea-ports of his kingdom. The same attention was shewn to the town twenty-nine years subsequently, by Louis XIV. then in his minority, accompanied by the Queen Regent; and, in our own days, it has been equally distinguished by Napoléon.

In this short outline of the principal events connected with the history of Dieppe, no notice has been taken of the honor acquired by its sailors, who have, however, on all occasions, distinguished themselves. They did so particularly in the year 1555, when, unassisted by their king, or by any other part of France, they armed their merchant vessels, and attacked and defeated, and nearly destroyed, the Flemish fleet, consisting of twenty-four sail of ships of war. At all times they have been considered as supplying some of the best men to the French navy, so that the President de Thou pronounced them to be entitled to the highest glory in nautical affairs. They lay claim to the honor of having first planted the standard of Christianity upon the coast of Guinea, where they established a settlement in the fourteenth century; of having been the first who discovered the great river of the Amazons; and also the first who sailed up that of St. Lawrence. Even to the present day, they carry on a considerable traffic in small ornaments made of ivory, a humiliating memento of their connection with Senegal: but all the rest of their commerce is dwindled into the fishery, and a small portion of coasting-trade.

The castle, (the subject of _plate thirty-four_,) stands upon a steep hill; and, on approaching the town from the sea, has a grand and imposing appearance. Its walls, flanked with towers and bastions, cause it to retain the look of strength, the reality of which has long since departed. The earliest portion of the building is probably a high quadrangular tower, with lofty pointed pannels, in the four walls. Even this, however, cannot have been erected anterior to the year 1443; for it is upon record that the Sieur des Marêts, the first governor of the place, then began to build a castle here, to protect the town from any farther attacks on the part of the English army. The inhabitants, during the reign of Henry IV. obtained permission to add to it a citadel; but the whole was suffered almost immediately afterwards to fell into decay.

[Illustration: Plate 35. CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, AT DIEPPE. _West front._]

[Illustration: Plate 36. CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, AT DIEPPE. _East end._]

The church of St. Jacques, figured in the _thirty-fifth_ and _thirty-sixth plates_, is the largest, and considerably the most interesting of the two parochial churches of the place. It had the singular good fortune of escaping, together with the castle, nearly uninjured from the bombardment, during the reign of our third William, which laid the town in ashes. It was begun about the year 1260, but was little advanced at the commencement of the following century; nor were its nineteen chapels, the works of the piety of individuals, completed before 1350. The roof of the choir remained imperfect till ninety years afterwards; while that of the transept is as recent as 1628. Thus it is a valuable specimen of the ecclesiastical architecture of successive ages. In the lines of the transepts are traces of the early pointed style, apparently coeval with the church at Eu: the friezes are ornamented with small pierced quatrefoils, as in that building; and the portals, now mutilated, are in the same style.--The nave is of much later date; and the vaulting, though Gothic, is intermixed with Grecian members and scrolls.--The triforium in the choir is filled with elegant perpendicular tracery. The Lady-Chapel is perhaps one of the last specimens of Gothic art, but still very pure, except in some of the smaller members, such as the niches in the tabernacles, which end in scallop-shells, instead of terminating with a groined canopy. The bosses of the groined roof are of the most delicate filagree work, and the vaulting is also ornamented with knots pendant from the ribs.--The pannel-work round the chapel takes circular terminations in each pannel; but filled within with an elegant tracery, terminating with the acanthus.--The windows of the chapel are acutely pointed.--The horizontal mullions, (an unusual feature in French architecture,) are ornamented on the outside with the ovolo. The nave is supported by flying buttresses, each filled with tracery of eight mullions.--The tower at the south angle of the west front is lofty, and in the _perpendicular style_. In the north aisle of the choir is an elegant screen, which probably incloses a chantry-chapel, and, like the lady-chapel, exhibits a singular mixture of pointed forms, interspersed with Roman members: parts of it resemble the tomb of Bishop Fox, at Winchester.

NOTES:

[67] _Mémoires Chronologiques pour servir à l'Histoire de Dieppe et à celle de la Navigation Française, Paris, 1785._--(2 vols. 8vo.)

[68] This festival was attended with ceremonies of the most absurd description, which were continued till the time of the revolution. They are detailed at length in the _Histoire de Dieppe_ I. p. 68; and a brief account has lately been given of them in English, in _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 24.

PLATE XXXVII.

TOWER OF THE CHURCH AT HAUTE ALLEMAGNE, NEAR CAEN.

The village of Haute Allemagne is situated at the distance of about a league to the south of Caen. Mention of it is to be found in the latin charters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, under the appellation of _Alamannia_, or _Alemannia_; and the older historians contend that it derived this name from having been the site of a colony of the _Alani_, a Scythian tribe, who ravaged a portion of Gaul in the early years of the fifth century, and afterwards, with the consent of the Roman emperors, established themselves in various parts of the country. This opinion, in the judgment of the Abbé De la Rue, receives confirmation from the circumstance of there being another village called _Allemagne_, in the vicinity of Valence, where it is known that a body of the same people was fixed; and it may perhaps be adduced as a still farther proof of its correctness, that the village of Allemagne, near Caen, formerly embraced a considerably greater extent of country.

[Illustration: Plate 37. TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF HAUTE ALLEMAGNE NEAR CAEN.]

Allemagne was one of the domains granted by the Conqueror to his abbey of St. Stephen; and in the charter, he states that he cedes it "with its dependencies." The meaning of this latter term is explained in the subsequent charter from his son Henry, in which four neighboring villages are expressly said to be _dependent upon Allemagne_. Allemagne was itself also divided into two parishes, the _upper_ and _lower_.

At present it is only remarkable for its quarries, from which the stones are dug, known in France by the name of _Carreaux d'Allemagne_, and commonly used for floors to rooms, not only in the province of Normandy, but throughout the whole kingdom. There is also a considerable export of them for the same purpose. It was in these quarries that the fossil crocodile was discovered in 1817; which, as being extraordinarily perfect, and the first specimen ever found with scales, has excited an uncommon degree of interest among naturalists.

Of the history of the parish of Allemagne, nothing is known. The portion of its church here figured, has been selected for engraving, as an instance of a Norman tower of unquestionable antiquity, and in the highest preservation. The pyramidal stone roof, similar to that of the church of St. Michel de Vaucelles, at Caen, appears to be quite in its original state. Even the small lucarne window in it looks coeval with the rest. The row of intersecting arches below is beautiful and peculiar.

PLATES XXXVIII.--XLI.

CHURCH OF ST. HILDEBERT, AT GOURNAY.

[Illustration: Plate 38. COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. HILDEBERT AT GOURNAY. _West front._]

The town of Gournay is generally supposed to rival, in point of antiquity, almost any other in this part of France. Tradition refers its origin to the days of Julius Cæsar, during the latter part of whose government in Gaul, a dangerous conspiracy broke out among the Bellovaci, the Caletes, and the Velliocasses, assisted by the inhabitants of other neighboring districts. This confederacy is supposed to have given rise to Gournay.

The situation of the town is upon the frontiers of the territories of the two first tribes just mentioned, the present inhabitants of the Pays de Caux and of the Beauvaisis, in a marshy spot, subject to frequent inundations from two small rivers, the Epte and the St. Aubin, whose waters flow beneath the walls of the place. Hence, an inference has naturally arisen, that the necessity for communication between people so near in point of position, and yet so effectually separated, first suggested the advantages to be derived from a bridge over the Epte, in a place otherwise impassable; and that the bridge was shortly afterwards followed by a cause-way, which, in its turn, held out inducements to settlers, so that the town imperceptibly grew out of the traffic thus occasioned.

The historical celebrity acquired by Gournay, far exceeds what might have been expected from its size or importance, and has altogether arisen from the power and the high military character of its Norman lords. Rollo, at the time that he parcelled out the lands of his newly-acquired sovereignty, amongst his companions in arms, bestowed Gournay, together with the whole of the Norman division of the Pays de Brai, upon a chieftain of the name of Eudes, to be held as a fief of the duchy, under the usual military tenure; binding him and his successors to furnish to the prince, in times of war, twelve of their vassals, and to arm all their dependents for the defence of the adjacent frontier. Eudes had a son of the name of Hugh; and he it is who is reported to have first directed his attention towards making Gournay a place of strength. The ancient records ascribe to him the erection of a citadel in the immediate vicinity of the church of St. Hildebert, surrounded with a triple wall and double fosse; and farther secured by a tower, which was called after his name, _la Tour Hue_, and which continued in existence till the beginning of the seventeenth century. Such was the reported strength of this fortress, that Brito, a chronicler, but, it must be remembered, a poetical one, declares that it was able to resist an hostile attack, even without a single soldier within the walls! His whole account of the place, in the time of Philip-Augustus, and of its capture by that monarch, in the sixth book of his _Philippiad_, is curious and interesting.

A second Hugh de Gournay, born after a lapse of about a century from the death of the son of Eudes, is usually accounted the head of the family, because it is from him that the regular series of their descent is to be traced. He was a man of whose military prowess many instances are recorded: among his other exploits, he is supposed to have been the chieftain, who, carrying his arms into the district of Beauvais, made himself master of the four villages there, which, from their subjection to him, have retained the name of _Les Conquêts_ and which continued for many centuries under the administration of the lords of Gournay. He also attended the Conqueror to England, where he was rewarded for his services by a grant of land which he held from that prince _in capite_. Upon a former occasion, he had been employed by him in a place of high trust, having been appointed to command, in conjunction with Taillefer, half-brother to the duke, and three other Norman nobles, the fleet sent to the protection of Edward the Confessor, against the claims of Harold. His name is also found in 1059, among the leaders of the Norman army, which defeated the French forces at Couppegueule, near Mortimer. At last, disgusted with earthly affairs, he retired to the abbey of Bec, and there, in the monastic robe, ended a life which had been devoted to pursuits of the most opposite tendency.--This Hugh de Gournay had a son of the name of Girald, who married the sister of William, Earl Warren, and accompanied Robert, Duke of Normandy, to the Holy Land.--The third, and last Hugh de Gournay, grandson of Girald, was in the number of those who followed Richard Coeur-de-Lion in a similar expedition, and was appointed his commissioner to receive the English share of the spoil after the battle of Acre. He was also among the barons who rose against King John. But his attachment to the English cause ultimately lost him his possessions in Normandy; for no sooner was Philip-Augustus master of Gournay, than he declared him a traitor, and banished him from France.

Philip added to the fortifications a new castle, in the direction of Ferrieres. This, however, has been long since destroyed; and indeed the probability is, that the walls and towers of Gournay were neglected and suffered to fall into decay, shortly after the annexation of the duchy to France. There can be little doubt but that the town originally owed its importance, as a fortress, to its position upon the frontiers of France and Normandy; and the consequence would therefore naturally follow, that, as soon as the ducal and regal crowns were united on the same head, it would cease to be maintained as a place of strength.--About a hundred years after the capture of Gournay by Philip-Augustus, Philip the Bold, great grandson of that monarch, bestowed the town and lordship upon his youngest son, Charles of Valois, at whose death it became a part of the dower of his widow, Matilda of Chatillon. Again, in like manner, on the decease of Philip of Valois, in 1350, Gournay was separated from the Crown, and assigned to the widowed queen, Blanche of Navarre. By this princess it was held for forty-eight years, when it once more reverted to the royal domains. But early in the succeeding century, the town fell, together with the rest of France, under the victorious arms of our sovereign Henry V. and upon his demise, it was a third time selected as a portion of the dower of the royal widow, Catherine, daughter of the French monarch, Charles VI. Her death, in 1438, restored it to England: but only to be held for the short term of eleven years, at which time, the reverses sustained by the British troops, occasioned the expulsion of our monarchs from their continental dominions.--From that period to the revolution, the lordship of Gournay, with the title of count, was constantly added by the French kings to the dignities of some one of the principal families of the realm; and in this manner, it successively passed through different branches of the houses of Harcourt, Orléans, Longueville, and Montmorenci.

[Illustration: Plate 39. COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. HILDEBERT AT GOURNAY. _View across the Nave into the North transept._]

The church of St. Hildebert,[69] the subject of these plates, was, previously to the revolution, both parochial and collegiate. Its foundation is supposed to be of very high antiquity. There is, however, no proof of the precise period of the establishment of the chapter here. The earliest records upon the subject, bear date in the year 1180, and merely mention it as being then in existence; but, according to tradition, it was first fixed at the neighboring village of Brefmoutier, and was removed to Gournay by Hugh, the last of the Norman counts. The same Hugh is generally reported to have commenced the erection of the present church; but it is sufficiently known with how little accuracy the early historians are wont to express themselves on these subjects. The term, "to rebuild," often means no more than to repair; so that it is in many cases more safe to judge from the style of a building itself, than from the records preserved to us respecting it. The architecture of the church of St. Hildebert would lead to the supposition, that a considerable portion of it was standing in its present state, at least one hundred years anterior to the time of Hugh; and, even admitting such to have been the case, there is still sufficient discrepancy in the rest of the edifice to account for the well attested circumstance, that, at the close of the thirteenth century, the church yet remained incomplete. The imperfect state of the building did not prevent its receiving the honor of a dedication: this ceremony was performed in one of the last years of the twelfth century, by Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, in person, attended, as commonly happened, by a great concourse of the nobles and clergy of the province; and, in the first year of the following century, Herbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, passed over from England for the express purpose of doing honor by his presence to the translation of the reliques of St. Hildebert. The banishment of Hugh de Gournay and confiscation of his property, which took place shortly after these events, deprived the canons of their liberal and powerful benefactor. Poverty caused the progress of the building to be suspended; and it was only by the aid of repeated indulgences, granted by the popes and archbishops,[70] that it was finally brought to a state of completion. The two western towers are of a considerably more recent period: they were erected in their present state, of wood, roofed with slate, in the middle of the seventeenth century. The timber was supplied by the Duchess of Longueville, whose husband was at that time Count of Gournay; and the rest of the charge was defrayed by the sale of the materials of a ruined chapel, dedicated to St. Julian, and of a small central tower, the only one originally attached to the building.

The church is in the form of a cross; consisting of a nave with aisles, choir, and transepts. The west front (_plate thirty-eight_) is in the earliest style of pointed architecture, and evidently of the period of the same Hugh de Gournay, by whom the whole edifice is said to be raised. If compared with the same portion of the churches known to have been erected at a similar period in England, the closest resemblance will be traced between them. That of Salisbury cathedral, the most noble instance of the kind in Britain, is later, and infinitely more richly ornamented. But in this at Gournay, the windows are the only portion that have altogether escaped mutilation or alteration. The side portals were evidently, in their original state, fronted with porches, which have now disappeared. Such has likewise been the case with the arches of entrance; and mention has already been made of the posterior date of the tower.