Aquitaine

“ The city of Bordeaux, near the mouth of the Garonne, as shown by the map, [E] was the chief city of Aquitaine. There the prince established his court, and reigned, as it were, for several years in great splendor. The [Pg 141] fame which he had acquired attracted to his court a great number of knights and nobles from all lands, and whenever a great personage had any wrongs, real or imaginary, to be redressed, or any political end to gain which required the force of arms, he was very likely to come to the Prince of Aquitaine, in order, if possible, to secure his aid. ”

“ Such a blend as these weaving-folk, brought together by one aim, could teach the arbitrary barons their place. Normandy, Aquitaine, Anjou, Brittany,—England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales—what a web of Empire they would make! And if into the dull russet and gray of this England there came a vivid young life like her Richard’s—yellow hair, sea-blue eyes, gay daring, impulsive [221] gallantry—and under all the stern fiber of the Norman—what kind of a tapestry would that be? Thus, as women have done through the centuries, Eleanor of Aquitaine let her mind play about her fingers. ”

“ THE PYRENEES TO PROVENCE As one turns north-eastward from the Pyrenees the bright abundant landscape passes gradually into a flattish grey-and-drab country that has ceased to be Aquitaine and is yet not Provence. ”

“ The ancient duchy of Aquitaine (later Guienne) , including a large part of what is now central and southern France, was abolished in 877, but the title of Duke of Aquitaine was conferred by the king upon a certain family of feudal lords, who gradually extended their power over Gascony and northward. To the southeast, the counts of Toulouse had begun to consolidate a little state which was to be the seat of the extraordinary literature of the troubadours. The county of Champagne has already been considered in the discussion of feudalism. ”

“ Aquitaine and Gascony, including Poitou{338} but not including Auvergne, together with the districts on the Channel, Calais with Guines and the county of Ponthieu, were made over to the King of England without the reservation of any homage or superiority of any kind. These lands became a territory as foreign to the French kingdom as the territory of her German and Spanish neighbours. ”

“ Aquitaine and the Imperial Burgundy have so much in common, so much that is utterly unlike anything in France, that, had they had the faintest chance of political union, they might have formed a true nation. But there was no moment, under Romans, under Goths, under Franks, when the two lands formed a political whole apart from any other land. Aquitaine and Burgundy were ever parted, each by itself was split in pieces, while Neustria and Austria ever [Pg 197] kept some measure of union, enough to enable them to grow into the great realms of France and Germany. ”

“ Massalia, which had braved the might of Cæsar, again braved the might of Charles of Anjou, and found the Frenchman a far harsher conqueror than the Roman. Aquitaine too, the other land of the tongue of oc, if not so distinctly republican as Provence, yet stands distinguished from France as emphatically a land of civic growth and civic privilege. The importance and independence of the cities grow as we go on a south-eastward journey through England, France, Aquitaine, Provence, and Italy.
We have been opposing cities to nations; but it is easier to define a city than to define a nation. ”

“ The duchy Aquitaine, or Guyenne, as held by Eleanor's predecessors, consisted, roughly speaking, of the territory between the Loire and the Garonne. More exactly, it was bounded on the north by Anjou and Touraine, on the east by Berry and Auvergne, on the south-east by the Quercy or County of Cahors, and on the south-west by Gascony, which had been united with it for the last hundred years. The old Karolingian kingdom of Aquitania had been of far greater extent; it had, in fact, included the whole country between the Loire, the Pyrenees, the Rhone and the ocean. ”

“ Until the dukedom of Aquitaine passed to a woman, as were the vassals, so was their sovereign. Eleanor’s grandfather the crusader-duke William VIII. and her father William IX. were simply the boldest knights, the gayest troubadours and the most reckless adventurers in their duchy. There can be no doubt that the submission of Aquitaine to Louis VII., so far as it ever did submit to him, was due to Eleanor’s influence ”

“ Welcome to Aquitaine, Sir Nigel Loring and Sir Oliver Buttesthorn. Nay, keep your knee for my sweet father at Windsor. I would have your hands, my friends. We are like to give you some work to do ere you see the downs of Hampshire once more. Know you aught of Spain, Sir Oliver?”
“Nought, my sire, save that I have heard men say that there is a dish named an olla which is prepared there, though I have never been clear in my mind as to whether it was but a ragout such as is to be found in the south, or whether there is some seasoning such as fennel or garlic which is peculiar to Spain.” ”

“ The feudal ties which bound Aquitaine to France were indeed so slight that, when Hugh Capet, in 990, asked of Count Adelbert of Périgueux, before the walls of the besieged city of Tours: "Who made thee count?" he was met with the prompt and significant rejoinder, "Who made thee king?"
At the close of the tenth century, France was ruled by close upon sixty princes, virtually independent, and yet a still greater number of prelates,—as powerful as any feudal lord,—who considered Hugh Capet of Paris only as one who was first among his peers. ”

“ You will see by the map the situation of the River Loire. It rises in the centre of France, and flows to the westward, through a country which was, even in those days, very fertile and beautiful. South of the Loire was a sort of kingdom, then under the dominion of a young and beautiful princess named Eleanora. The name of her kingdom was Aquitaine. This lady afterward became the mother of Richard. She was very celebrated in her day, and has since been greatly renowned in history under the name of Eleanora of Aquitaine. ”

“ The facts of English history were disregarded, and these remedial expedients were adopted, in the light of which the irony of the Spartans pales, who to put down drunkenness made their slaves drunk, and then exhibited them as hideous examples.
We have seen that the traffic of wines with Bordeaux was brought about through the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine. That ‘great Provence dower,’ as Dante calls it, was the secret of the new trade with Guienne and Gascony, provinces which had both been erected into the dukedom of Aquitaine in the preceding century. ”

“ In the duchy of Aquitaine, much more of the old Roman civilization survived, both among the cities and the nobility; and the Normans, newly settled in the north, had brought with them the vigour of their race. They had taken up such dead or dying culture as they found in France, and were carrying it further, so as in some degree to awaken their neighbours. Kings and their great vassals could generally read and write, and understand the Latin in which all records were made, but few except the clergy studied at all. ”

“ For nearly a century the city remained in the power of the Visigoths, who, being Arians, persecuted the Catholic inhabitants. Sidonius Apollinaris deplores the injury done to learning by their invasion, but perhaps the decline of learning was partly owing to a growing distaste for pagan literature among Christians. The barbarians were finally routed by Clovis in 507, and he took possession of Bordeaux. Charlemagne made Aquitaine a kingdom for his son Louis le Débonnaire. Louis, son of Charles le Chauve, was the last king of Aquitaine. ”

“ When the English reached the hilly centre of France food failed them. The winter came, and horses and men died of cold and want. A rabble of half-starved fugitives was all that reached Bordeaux after a march of six hundred miles. Aquitaine, where the inhabitants were for the most part hostile to the English, and did everything in their power to assist the French, was before long all but wholly lost, and in 1375 a truce was made which put an end to hostilities for a time, leaving only Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bayonne, and Bordeaux in the hands of the English. ”

“ Its population, notwithstanding the admixture of German blood consequent on the Gothic conquest, had remained pre-eminently Roman in its character, and had attained in the seventh century to an unusual degree of wealth and civilisation. The southern part of Aquitaine had been occupied by a people called Vascones or Gascons, who extended themselves as far as the Garonne, and had also submitted to the Frankish rule during the better days of the elder dynasty. ”

“ The land was left uncultivated. Forests grew thicker between Seine and Loire. Wolves ravaged Aquitaine with none to hinder them. The South was still infested by the Saracens. France seemed given up to wild beasts. ”

“ Hemmed in alike to south and east by close allies of the English king whose own duchy of Aquitaine surrounded almost the whole of its north-western border, the house of St.-Gilles felt that it was no longer possible to resist his claim to overlordship over its territories. Henry carried his guests back with him to Limoges; there he settled the dispute between Raymond and Alfonso; and there Raymond did homage to the two Henrys for Toulouse, [641] promising to do the like at Whitsuntide to Richard as duke of Aquitaine, and pledging himself to military service and yearly tribute. ”

“ England, with her own four or five millions and a little help from Aquitaine, rode roughshod again and again over the disorganized ten millions north of the Loire; while the French—even during those thirty years of union which elapsed between the recovery of Guienne and the murder of the Duke of Orleans—frequently enough burned our southern seaports, but never penetrated more than a few miles inland in the face of our shire-levies. ”

“ After the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, Aquitaine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted in the interests of the King of England into an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces of Poitou, the Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois and Rouergue, greatly to the dissatisfaction of the people, who remonstrated against being handed over to a foreign lord. Charles V. and Charles VII. sought on every available occasion to escape from its obligations, and the towns were in periodic revolt. ”

“ It was through her staunch defence of Mirabeau in Poitou that John got possession of his nephew’s person. She died on the 1st of April 1204, and was buried at Fontevrault. Although a woman of strong passions and great abilities she is, historically, less important as an individual than as the heiress of Aquitaine, a part of which was, through her second marriage, united to England for some four hundred years. ”

“ When I leave the schools there will not be such a doctor as myself under heaven.... I am prior of Chiusi, and know how to write sermons.... I am so wise I could arrange and manage an entire council. In Aquitaine there is no learning of any kind, every one there is a dunce; if a man knows a sprinkling of grammar, he is thought at once to be a second Virgil. In France (that is, the province, not the kingdom of France) , there is a little more erudition, but not much. The real seat of wisdom is in Lombardy, where I have carried on my studies. ”

“ The peculiar position in which Eleanor stood with regard to Aquitaine may have influenced Henry II when in 1168, after the revolt of the Counts of March and Aquitane , he left her in the disturbed district under the care of Count Patrick of Salisbury (Rob. de Monte, p. 517) . Two years later it was at her intercession that the king invested his son Richard with the duchy (about August 1170) (Geoffrey of Vigeois, p. 318; Roger of Hoveden, ii. 5, 6) . ”

“ It became later part of Aquitania secunda and formed the pagus petragoricus, alter wards the diocese of Périgueux. Since the 8th century it had its own counts (see the Histoire généalogique of P. Anselme, tome iii) , who were feudatories of the dukes of Aquitaine and in the 13th century were the vassals of the king of England. ”

“ Charles, by the grace of God King of France, to our nephew the Prince of Wales and of Aquitaine, greeting. Whereas many prelates, barons, knights, universities, communes, and colleges of the country of Gascony and the duchy of Aquitaine, have come thence into our presence, that they might have justice touching certain undue grievances and vexations which you, through weak counsel and silly advice, have designed to impose upon them, whereat we are quite astounded, . ”

“ Lourdes, as well as the whole province of Bigorre (which lay between Béarn and Foix) , fell into the hands of the English by the treaty of Bretagne, and constituted a part of the Duchy of Aquitaine, which Edward III. conferred on his son, the Black Prince, who left England to take possession of his domains in 1363. ”

“ The new duchy of Aquitaine, comprising the three districts already mentioned, remained in the hands of Rainulf’s successors, in spite of some trouble with their Frankish overlords, until 893 when Count Rainulf II. was poisoned by order of King Charles III. the Simple. Charles then bestowed the duchy upon William the Pious, count of Auvergne, the founder of the abbey of Cluny, who was succeeded in 918 by his nephew, Count William II., who died in 926. ”

“ Hundreds of men enrolled themselves at once. The confrères, from the fact that they wore hoods of white linen, obtained the name of Chaperons Blancs. Upon their breasts hung a piece of lead with this inscription: 'Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem.' The confraternity spread into Aquitaine, and the routiers were defeated in pitched battles with great slaughter; but the chaperons in course of time became lawless fanatics, and were almost as great a nuisance to society as those whom they had undertaken to exterminate. ”