Part 9 (1/2)
Sir Robert Knollys, Sir Hugh Calverly Croquart, and others were made prisoners, and thus ended the Battle of the Thirty; gained, however, in a most disloyal manner, Montauban getting the aid of a horse, when all the other combatants fought on foot.
The Breton knights returned to Josselin, their helmets decorated with branches of the broom-
”In every basnet a bright broom flower;”
the place where the battle was fought running, according to the French poem,
”Le long d'une genetaie qui etait verte et belle.”
Josselin is celebrated for its chateau, where died, 1407, Olivier du Clisson, the contemporary and brother of arms of Du Guesclin, whom he succeeded in the dignity of Constable of France, which no one for some time would accept, not thinking themselves worthy of replacing him. Both differed widely in position and character. Du Guesclin, though of a n.o.ble family, had not the advantage of fortune like Clisson, who had immense wealth and landed possessions, which made him a kind of sovereign in the duchy. He willed away a million of money. Clisson was a statesman, Du Guesclin's sole glory was in arms. Clisson was cruel, intriguing, and insatiable for riches; Du Guesclin was humane, loyal, and disinterested.
Both were equal in bravery and physical force: the lance of Du Guesclin and the axe of Clisson(20) carried all before them. Clisson joined with Du Guesclin in freeing the country from the ”Great Companies,” and his most celebrated action was the defeat of the Flemings at Rosbecq. Few subjects have been so powerful, or have filled so important a part, as Olivier du Clisson. He was true to his sovereign after his reconciliation, and to his children after him. John IV. had scarce closed his eyes when the daughter of Clisson, wife of Jean de Penthievre, came to her father and said, ”It depends only on you that my husband receives the inheritance of Brittany.”
”How?” asked the Constable. ”By your ridding yourself of the children of De Montfort.” ”Ah! cruel and perverse woman,” exclaimed Clisson; ”if you live long, you will destroy the honour and property of your children;” and he accompanied his words with such violent menaces, that, seized with affright, she fled from his presence, and falling down, broke her thigh.
The prophecy of Clisson was fulfilled, as we shall later relate. The ancient chateau in which he died was destroyed by Henry IV.; the present building was raised by Alain IX., Vicomte de Rohan, through Alain VIII., who married Beatrix, eldest daughter of the Constable, by which Josselin descended to the Rohans,(21) a house yielding to none in antiquity and ill.u.s.tration, being descended from the ancient sovereigns of Brittany, and allied with all the crowned heads of Europe,-”Princes of Bretagne” they were styled. But the Rohan family became unpopular in the duchy, when John II. attached himself to Louis XI. and France, for the bribe of 8000 livres to himself and 4000 to his wife.
At the battle of St. Aubin du Cormier, which sealed the fate of Brittany, the Vicomte du Rohan betrayed his brother-in-law Duke Francis and the national cause, and fought on the side of France. He afterwards marched at the head of the French troops, and besieged Guingamp, where its brave defenders declared, ”As long as there is a d.u.c.h.ess in Brittany, we will not give up her towns.” But they took Pontrieux and Concarneau, and in 1491 the Vicomte du Rohan was appointed by Charles VIII.
Lieutenant-General in Lower Brittany. He was called by his countrymen the ”Felon Prince;” and so detested was he and his race, that it pa.s.sed into a proverb to say of a mean, treacherous, dishonest person, ”Il mange a l'auge comme Rohan,”-”He eats at the manger (that is, the table of the King of France) like Rohan.” ”Un peu de jactance,” therefore, justly observes Daru, in the proud motto of the Rohans:-(22)
”Roi ne puis, Prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: 43. Chateau of Josselin.]
The chateau of Josselin stands by a river, on which side it presents piles of towers and fortifications covered with slate, a severe specimen of military architecture; while on the other side, the cour d'honneur, we see one of the handsomest chateaux of the Renaissance yet remaining in Brittany. This facade is richly ornamented with sculptures of varied and fanciful design. Immense gurgoyles, in the form of serpents, stretching from the roof to the base, pierced bal.u.s.trades or galleries of lace-like delicacy, in which are introduced, according to the fas.h.i.+on of the period, the initial letters of the Vicomte Alain, A and V interlaced. The old Rohan motto, ”a plus,” and the escutcheon of gules, nine mascles or lozenges, occur in every part of this gorgeous front, and also on the finely-carved chimneypiece of the reception room (salle d'honneur). The whole of the chateau is in course of restoration by the Prince de Leon.
In the church of Josselin is the tomb of the Constable Clisson, with that of Marguerite de Rohan his wife; both statues were mutilated in the Revolution, but are now restored: they are of white marble on a black slab. Clisson is in armour, Marguerite has her hair plaited and confined in a network of pearls; she wears a long robe, with a surcoat above, furred with ermine. The motto, ”Pour ce qu'il me plest (plait),” is in an oratory which belonged to Clisson, expressing his haughty and overbearing will. This same motto appears on his seal, affixed to a letter preserved in the archives of the empire, and he is recorded to have had it inscribed upon his Constable's sword, which, like Du Guesclin, he always wore unsheathed, to show he was ready at all times to fight the enemies of the crown.
There hangs in the church a picture of the finding of the image Notre Dame-du-Roncier, of which we relate the legend:-
Long before Josselin was a town, a poor labourer had remarked, on the spot where now stands the church of Notre Dame, a bramble bush, which the frost and snow of the roughest winters never deprived of its leaves, but it always remained fresh and green. Surprised at this strange phenomenon, he dug the soil under the bramble, and discovered a wooden statue of the Virgin. A marvellous light played round the head of the image. The man carried it home; but next morning, to his surprise, he found the statue under the same bush whence he had taken it. The miracle was repeated several times, and soon attracted crowds of devotees. A chapel was built to deposit the sacred image, houses followed next, and a little town gradually formed, which the Comte de Porhoet surrounded with walls, and Josselin, his son, endowed with his name, 1030. Such was the rise of Josselin. A celebrated pilgrimage still exists to Josselin on Whit Tuesday, resorted to by crowds of ”aboyeuses” or barkers, people possessed with this kind of epilepsy, said to be hereditary in several families, and which is accounted for from the circ.u.mstance of a party of washerwomen having refused a gla.s.s of water to the Vierge du Roncier, who went to them disguised in the garb of a beggar. The merciless creatures set their dogs upon the pretended mendicant, and thus brought down upon themselves and their posterity this fearful malediction. The disease is supposed to return periodically about Whitsuntide, and only to leave the afflicted when they are carried forcibly to the sanctuary of Notre Dame to press with their foaming lips the fragments still remaining of the ancient miraculous statue which was burnt upon the public Place in the time of the French Revolution.
We left Ploermel at four o'clock in the morning for Montfort-sur-Mer, pa.s.sing through Plelan; while the horses baited at a little auberge we got some hot coffee, and found a good fire in the kitchen. The landlady, shut in her ”lit clos,” did not disturb herself, but occasionally put out her head to give directions for our breakfast. On the left of the road is the forest of Paimpont, which formerly extended from Montfort to Rostrenan, a kind of neutral desert land, called Broceliande, and famous, under that name, in the history of King Arthur. It was the theatre of the fairies'
most wondrous enchantments. Here was the fountain of Youth and also that of Barenton, where they came every day to draw water in an emerald basin.
Here, too, the enchanted Merlin has lain sleeping for centuries, enthralled by his pupil the fairy Viviana, who has cast a spell upon her master she knows not how to break.
Montfort, where we joined the railway, is celebrated for the legend of the duck and its ducklings, and was the residence of the De Montfort family until Guy Comte de Laval and Sire de Montfort married Francoise de Dinan, widow of the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne, when the Montforts left their paternal demesne for the chateaux of Laval, Vitre, and Chateaubriant.
The railway took us to Rennes, an uninteresting modern French town, the old town was burnt down in 1720, and straight streets have risen up, with no traces of its having been once the ancient capital of Brittany. Indeed, so French is it altogether, that the saying runs-”Bon Breton de Vannes, bon Francais de Rennes.” It was here that Constance, heiress of the duchy, held her court, with Geoffrey Plantagenet, who, with their unfortunate son Arthur, were the only Plantagenets, dukes of Brittany. On the murder of Arthur, his sister Alice carried the ducal crown to her husband, Pierre de Dreux (called Mauclerc, from his animosity to the clergy), and from them descended the dukes of Brittany down to Queen Anne, whose double marriage conveyed the duchy to France and the Valois.
When Henry IV. made his solemn entry into Rennes, the Governor presented him with the three silver-gilt keys of the city, of rich workmans.h.i.+p; upon which the King observed, ”Elles etaient belles, mais qu'il aimait mieux les clefs des curs des habitants.”
The following year we made a tour along the banks of the Loire, and at Angers embarked on board the steamer for Nantes. The scenery down the Loire is rich, and the hills covered with vineyards, islands planted with willows, and sunny villages, or occasionally a gloomy fortress comes to view. Ingrandes is the frontier town, half in Anjou and half in Brittany, between the modern departments of Loire Inferieure and Maine-et-Loire.
Lower down is St. Florent (Maine-et-Loire), with its recollections of the wonderful pa.s.sage of the Loire by the Vendean army, so graphically related by Madame de la Rochejacquelin, and near the island of Meilleraie, where their brave General Bonchamps expired, after the fatal engagement of Chollet; his last act being the saving the lives of four thousand prisoners shut up in the church, and about to be executed by the exasperated Vendeans. ”Grace aux prisonniers” were his dying words.
Opposite St. Florent is Varades, where the Vendeans landed after crossing the Loire. Only a feeble post opposed them. Had the republicans lost less time, and sent a force after their victory at Chollet, much calamity would have been spared to Brittany, and the Royalists themselves would have been saved the terrible defeats of Le Mans and Savenay.
Pa.s.sing Ancenis, which rises in an amphitheatre on the vine-clothed hills, and, with its suspension-bridge, is one of the most picturesque points in the river, we reached Oudon, with its tall octagonal tower; on the left, in the department of Maine-et-Loire, nearly opposite, stands the ruined castle of Champtoceaux, where Duke John V. was kept a prisoner by the implacable enemies of his house, the Penthievre family.
Marguerite de Clisson, widow of Jean de Bretagne, Comte de Penthievre, lived in retirement in her stately fortress of Champtoceaux, with her three sons, Oliver, Count of Blois, and his brothers. Marguerite inherited the pride, hatred, and cruelty, of her father, without his chivalrous loyalty and magnanimity. The kingdom was filled with troubles, and she thought it a favourable moment for reviving the pretensions of her family.