Part 21 (2/2)
That was quite sufficient for these Gallic enthusiasts, who desired to give to the French bishoprics Apostolic founders. They supposed that Galatia was a slip of the pen for Gallia, and argued, if to Gallia, then to Vienne, the most ancient and important city therein, _q.e.d._ But no bishop of Vienne appears fixed with any certainty before Verus, who attended the Council of Arles in A.D. 314. It is, however, quite certain that the Church was founded there before A.D. 150; for one of the most precious and authentic records of the early Church we have is the letter written by the Vienne Christians to those of the East, recording the martyrdom of the bishop Pothinus of Lyons.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Porte de l'Ambulance, Vienne.]
It used to be said of the old Gallo-Roman city that its wealth was so great that the streets were paved with mosaic. Now one would be thankful for a bit that was smooth. The pavement is almost as bad as that of Arles.
CHAPTER XXII.
BOURGES.
The siege of Avaric.u.m by Caesar--The complete subjugation of Gaul--The statue of the Dying Gaul at Rome--Beauty of Bourges--The cathedral--Not completed according to design--Defect in height--Strict geometrical proportion in design not always satisfactory--Necessity of proportion for acoustics--Domestic architecture in Bourges--The house of Jacques Coeur--Story of his life--A rainy day--Why Bourges included in this book--A silver thimble--_Que de singeries faites-vous la, Madeleine?_--Adieu.
Bourges stands in the very forefront of Gaulish history marked by a great disaster. There, on a little height at the junction of the Yevre and the Auron, the gallant Bituriges had their capital, Avaric.u.m. In six campaigns Caesar had, as he believed, broken the neck of all resistance, and Gaul was under the iron heel of Rome. ”My aunt Julia,” said Caesar, ”is, maternally, the daughter of kings; paternally--” he pa.s.sed his fingers through his curled and scented locks--”paternally, she is descended from the immortal G.o.ds.” After that, even barbarians must feel that it was in vain to strive against a man thus preordained to mastery. Yet they did not see it.
When Julius Caesar was in Rome, after six years of stubborn conflict, after incredible suffering and bloodshed, the heart of the people though bowed down was not broken.
There lived among the Arvernians, in the high mountainland, among the volcanic peaks of Auvergne, as it is now called, a young chief, whose real name is not known, but whom history calls Vercingetorix, that is, Head over a Hundred Tribes. The time was come for an united, determined, and desperate resistance. He sent messengers throughout Gaul. The downtrodden inhabitants rose to a man and invested Vercingetorix with the chief command.
In the year of Rome 702, B.C. 32, Caesar was suddenly informed in Italy that his work of six years was threatened with ruin. Most of the Gallic nations, united under a chieftain hitherto unknown, were rising with one common impulse, and recommencing war.
Caesar at once returned to Gaul. He had one quality, rare even amongst the greatest men, he remained cool amidst the hottest alarms. He was always quick, never hasty. He placed himself at the head of his troops, and, in the early part of March, moved to what is now Sens, the very centre of revolt, and looked round to decide where first to strike.
Vercingetorix from the outset knew that the ill-armed and worse disciplined Gauls could not cope in the open field with Caesar and the Roman legions; he therefore formed a plan of campaign that required great sacrifices on the side of the Gauls, for the sake of the common safety. No walls, he a.s.sured the confederates, could withstand the skill of the Romans in engineering, no array maintain itself in the field against their phalanx. But he reminded them that through the winter and early spring the soil on which the enemy trod could not furnish him with provision. He must disperse his troops among the fortresses. Let then, said he, no further attempts be made to defy the Roman in the open field; let him rather be followed in detail, and cut off when separated into cantonments, and above all, let the towns that served him for magazines be destroyed by the hands of the inhabitants themselves. He recommended in fact the very course pursued more than eighteen hundred years later by the Russians against the French Caesar, a course which proved fatal to him.
The a.s.sembled council of Gaulish states a.s.sented gallantly to this proposal. In one day twenty cities of the Bituriges were flaming, and similar havoc was made throughout the territories of the allies. But when the fate of Avaric.u.m (Bourges) came to be discussed, the hearts of the Bituriges failed them. Their deputies knelt to the a.s.sembled chiefs and interceded for the preservation of their beautiful, and as they deemed it, impregnable city. The council yielded. In vain did Vercingetorix urge them to carry out their determination without exception. They would surrender every other city to the flames, but not their loved capital, not Avaric.u.m.
The situation was admirably calculated for defence. It stood on rising ground, and the only approach to it then was a causeway between the river and a mora.s.s. The garrison laboured night and day to strengthen their defences with earthworks and with palisades of sharpened stakes. The Romans at once moved from Sens and surrounded the place. The story of its fall I will take from the graphic pen of Dean Merivale:--”Whilst the Bituriges within their city were hard pressed by the machinery which the Roman engineers directed against their walls, the forces of the proconsul on their side were hara.s.sed by the fatigues of the siege and the scarcity of provisions. Caesar is lavish of praise in speaking of the fort.i.tude with which his soldiers bore their privations; they refused to allow him to raise the siege, and when he at last led them against the enemy's army, and finding it too strongly posted for an attack, withdrew them again within their lines, they submitted to the disappointment, and betook themselves once more without a murmur to the tedious operations of the blockade.
The skill of the a.s.sailants at length triumphed over the bravery of the defenders. The walls were approached by towers at various points, and mounds constructed against which the combustible missiles of the besieged were unavailing. Finally, a desperate sally was repulsed, and then, at last the constancy of the Bituriges began to fail. Taking advantage of a moment when the watch on the walls had relaxed its vigilance, Caesar marshalled his legions behind his works, and poured them suddenly against the opposing ramparts. They gained the summit of the walls, which the defenders abandoned without a blow, rallying, however, in the middle of the town, in such hasty array as the emergency would allow. A b.l.o.o.d.y struggle ensued; both parties were numerous, and the a.s.sailants gave no quarter. The Gauls were routed and exterminated, their women and children mercilessly slaughtered, and the great central city of Gaul fell into the hands of the conquerors without affording a single captive for their triumph.” After that the fate of the insurrection was sealed. The war was carried on with fluctuations of fortune even into an eighth campaign, and then the yoke of Rome, iron, and doubly weighted with the wrath of the conqueror, was riveted on to the neck of prostrate Gallia, never again to be shaken off.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A street corner, Bourges.]
Now, day after day at Rome during the winter had I stood before the Dying Gaul in the Capitoline Museum, that statue of incomparable pathos:--
”He leans upon his hand--his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low-- From the red gash fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The arena swims around him--he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.”
_Childe Harold._
The statue is not of a Dying Gladiator, but of a Gaulish chief, who has dealt himself the death-wound rather than fall into servitude to the Roman, and then has broken his sword.
And, after having looked and dreamed over that figure, could one come to Bourges and not think of that heroic and fatal struggle?
Bourges was a beautiful city in those times, loved by the Bituriges so that they could not resolve to destroy it; but oh! how beautiful it is now, with its quaint Mediaeval and Renaissance houses, and above all that most glorious cathedral, one of the very finest creations of art in the world.
And yet, it is not perfect. The original design was not carried out. The nave has not the height proposed. Funds failed, and it was finished off as best might be. It wants about forty-six feet of the height it should have had, to be in correct proportion. The flying b.u.t.tresses outside were designed and executed to carry a vaulting some forty-six feet higher than the present one, and they are now of no use; they sustain nothing, all the outward thrust of the central vault is thrown on the second stage of b.u.t.tresses. Fine as is the interior, it ought to be finer. The clerestory windows are dwarfed, and the height of the side aisles is felt to be out of all proportion to that of the nave. Moreover, there is nothing of the wonderful skill of design in the apsidal chapels, that is seen at Amiens, Vezelai, Beauvais, &c. Instead of forming an integral portion of the plan, they are mere excrescences in the sides of the apse.
However, in spite of defects, partly in design, but mainly through lack of means to carry it out, the cathedral of Bourges is of singular beauty. In one point the architect was a greater man than the designers of Amiens and Cologne. These two cathedrals are in strict proportion in all their parts.
The designer of each, like the architect of York Minster, was a great man with the compa.s.ses. But an architect should be artist as well as geometrician. I have ever felt in York Minster, in Amiens and Cologne, that there is a lack of genius, of the human soul in the creation.
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