House of Burgesses

“ The conglomerate structure of to-day which serves its civic functions so well is an outgrowth of all these varied components which made up the ducal residence of old. It was midway in its career that it became the Parlia{122}ment House of the États de Bourgogne, so it took naturally to its new function when it came to uphold merely civic dignity.
The apartment where sat the Burgundian Parliament, the Salle des États, has been recently restored and decorated with a series of wall paintings depicting the glories of Burgundy. ”

“ A path leads off the road, down through the vines, and up to the cottages at the castle foot, where you can climb, by another steep stony way, to the great, double-towered gate, guarded by machicolations and portcullis, and bearing the coat-of-arms of the house of Berzé. ”

“ They relate to small patches of arable land held by burgesses: that is to say, they relate to places in which a strong communal sentiment was developed during the later middle ages, and they do not relate to communities that ought to be called agricultural. The ‘burgess plot’ is not large enough to have been any man’s livelihood when cultivated in medieval fashion, and it may well be modern. It is demonstrable that in one case a very ‘archaic’ arrangement was deliberately adopted in the nineteenth century by burgesses who preferred ‘allotment grounds’ to pasture rights. ”

“ At the time of the rise of Cluny, Burgundy, under the capetian dukes, was already established as a vassal province of France, but the inwardness of Burgundian history—of French history, indeed, in the 11th and 12th centuries—will be understood only by those who realize that, until the advent of the semi-royal dukes of the house of Valois, in 1364, the controlling forces of the duchy are to be sought, not in Dijon, nor in Auxerre, but here, in this the mother abbey of Western Europe. ”

“ Crossing this grassy, stoutly-walled terrace, you pass beneath another fortified gate, where scarlet creepers cling, to the court yard of the castle, bright with beds of fuschias, and masses of ball-shaped white flowers. Shade is given by a great walnut-tree; and here, too, is an adjunct, indispensable now, as in mediæval times,—a well. The façade of the house shows, upon its soft, gray stone, the typical cupid's bow windows of the fifteenth century. Across the dwarf wall, the view extends away, eastward, over a lower terrace, to the trimly-kept kitchen gardens, and ancient out-buildings ”

“ Invested with this peace the town becomes, like a royal palace or the shrine of a saint, a sanctuary protected by special pains and penalties; the burgess stands to the king in the same relation as the widow and the orphan; to do him wrong is an outrage against the royal majesty. Next comes the right of trade. The burgesses are allowed to commute their servile dues and obligations for a fixed money-rent, that they may be at liberty for pursuits more lucrative than agriculture. They also receive a licence to hold a weekly market, and possibly a yearly fair as well ”

“ While other vassals might hold of a graduated hierarchy of overlords up to the crown, the burgess always held directly of the sovereign. It is curious that while in England the burgage-tenure was deemed a species of socage, to distinguish it from the military holdings, in Scotland it was strictly a military holding, by the service of watching and warding for the defence of the burgh. In England the franchises enjoyed by burgesses, freemen and other consuetudinary constituencies in burghs, were dependent on the character of the burgage-tenure. ”

“ Their grandson, the Emperor Charles V., in one of the many bargains made and unmade between him and François I.—the one the direct descendant of Louis of Orleans and the other the direct descendant of John of Burgundy—gave up to the French crown all that Burgundy owned in France, one portion of it in Paris being this Hôtel de Bourgogne. By now this once most strongly fortified and best defended fortress-home in all the town was fallen into sad decay, its spacious courts the playground of stray children, its great halls and roomy chambers a refuge for tramps and rascals. ”

“ But at least in this last case, the burgesses may be new-comers, or rather perhaps we may see that an old idea is giving way to a newer idea of a borough, and that if men engaged in trade or handicraft settle round a market-place and pay money-rents to a lord they will be called burgesses, though the town is no national fortress. ”

“ In the Castle at Burgos, once a sumptuous palace as well as a citadel, the marriage of the Cid took place; also that of Edward the First of England and Eleanor of Castile. Burgos is illustrious among cities, as having given birth to the Cid, who in 1040, first saw the light in a house which stood on the spot where now stands an obelisk, in the Calle Alta, erected by Charles III. in 1784. There are, of course, a large number [Pg 75] of people who know all about the Cid, and the derivation of the word. ”

“ It was a priceless acquisition: every dictate of prudence, of policy, of patriotism demanded that it should be sacredly kept: it was immediately thrown away by an act of fatuity which was the climax of the bad reign of John-the-good. John issued a patent creating his beloved Philip Duke of Burgundy, and ceding the duchy to him and to his heirs forever. Thus was founded in the person of Philip-the-bold, the famous second House of Burgundy.
We left a page or two ago, Margaret of Flanders duchess dowager of Burgundy, widowed and childless. ”

“ When we consider the practical identity, as exhibited by their old accounts, of the public services done by the Capital Burgesses and those performed by the Common Burgesses; when we find the old freehold estates of the Capital Burgesses closely intermixed with those of the Common Burgesses; when we see the Capital Burgesses and Commonalty (Common Burgesses) described in the deed which incorporated them as a "body politic," and as identifying themselves on their common seal with the borough of Sheffield; when we see that the Capital Burgesses and the Common Burgesses used the same seal ”

“ There is something good at every turn—a high-pitched, pierced, white gable, from which black window-eyes look out upon a dark, brown-green, mottled roof touched with red; a wall with a warm tiled hood; a glimpse, through a trefoiled gate, of a miniature Renaissance garden, with box and ivy edged borders, fruit trees jewelled with white blossom, and a lovely, pierced balustrade, leading up to a Kate-Greenaway House. ”

“ Wandering dream-hunter that I am, it is there that I find myself gazing, at these shining, shining waters, and beyond them, to the real Burgundy, to the memories of her glorious past still lingering in the Palace of Dijon, and the mother abbeys of the west. While my wife sketched Nantua, and envied the hay-makers their arms, I thought of Cluny and of Citeaux, of things, in fact, symbolized in that Romanesque tower below. ”

“ This is the Burgundy which has Dijon for its capital, and which was held by more than one dynasty of dukes as vassals of the Western kings, first at Laon, and then at Paris. This Burgundy, which, as the name of France came to bear its modern sense may be distinguished as the French Duchy, must be carefully distinguished from the Royal Burgundy" of the Cis-Jurane and Trans-Jurane kingdoms mentioned above. E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 6, section 1. BURGUNDY: A. D, 888-1032. The French Dukedom. The Founding Of The First Capetian House. ”

“ Tortured lines are the inevitable result. Many of the figures however, are very charming; notably the Madeleine holding her hair, and Catherine of Alexandria trampling down the Emperor Maximilian of Italy. The Marguerites make effective and appropriate ornament, as also do the briquets of the house of Burgundy—two sticks in the form of St. Andrew's cross.
The altar piece of the virgin in the north transept is one of the most extraordinary productions of its kind that I know. It is more magnificent even than the tombs, and far exceeds them in grace, charm, and realism. ”

“ The Grande Rue, by which you enter the town from the east, is so narrow, that it affords no glimpse of what lies on either hand; and it was with unexpected suddenness, that, turning to the right, after a few minutes of wandering, we stood before the Hotel de Bourgogne, and looked up from the little, white building, at the great, grey, octagonal tower and the wall of masonry, that, we knew, must be the last survival of the Abbey Church itself. At that moment we were standing on the site of the nave; but we did not know it. It takes time to orient oneself. ”

“ It has ever been a land of prosperity and plenty, to which, in these late days, must be added peace, for there is no region in all France of to-day where there is more contentment and comfort than in the wealthy and opulent Departments of the Côte d’Or and the Saône and Loire which, since the Revolution, have been carved out of the very heart of old Burgundy.
The French themselves are not commonly thought to be great travellers, but they love “le voyage” nevertheless, and they are as justifiably proud of their antiquities and their historical monuments as any other race on earth. ”

“ Away to the north-west, behind the tossing boughs of the poplars, the setting sun is adorning with changing purples the flanks of the distant hills. The broadest of those peaks, crested with dark foliage, is none other than our old friend the Mount.
We turned to the opposite side of the valley. Before us were symbols of two later periods of Burgundy's prosperity—the modern city of Autun, seated proudly upon the lower slopes of a mountain throne, and, high above the roofs, the great mass of the cathedral of St. Lazare lifting her Gothic spire to the sky. ”

“ If we would judge aright of the first red wine of France we must go to Brussels, to Dinant, to Charleroi, to Namur. Not on the banks of the Loire but of the Meuse dwell the folk who know what Burgundy is, what Burgundy means. Indeed, the inhabitants of the Ardennes care little enough for the choicer arts. It is not for them to collect enamels. Neither pottery nor pictures seduce them to extravagance. But religiously do they select and treasure their Burgundy, hiving it in cellars, the building and furnishing whereof have been the work of generations. ”

“ And as for the motorists; they come in with the darkness, and go out with the dawn—"Must be at Dijon by ten."
In all France I do not know a richer study in warm, red roof-colours than towered Arnay, seen at sunset from the high land on the road to Saulieu, nor a more satisfying example of the outlines of a ramparted Gothic-Renaissance town. Nor, as is sometimes the case, does close acquaintance disenchant you. Wander through its streets, and prove for yourself that it is one of the most unspoiled places in all Burgundy. ”

“ It also appears that the loyalty of the Burgesses during the season of the adverse fortunes of the King, and the losses which they had incurred in consequence, did not pass unnoticed. The King liberally rewarded them. The official papers which attest this, allege as the reason for the royal bounty “the losses which they [the Burgesses of Bridgnorth] had sustained in the time when the kingdom was disturbed, [Pg 49] and because they faithfully adhered to the King, and to Edward, his son, in the time aforesaid.”— [p. 309.] ”

“ Whatever feudal reminiscence may linger in the minds of the readers of old chronicles let no one forget that France in general, and Burgundy in particular, is no longer a land of poverty where everybody but the capitalist has to pick up fagots for fires. ”

“ Yet history does not end the attractions of Burgundy. It only begins them. Nature, too, has her pageant "in this best garden of the world," she will hold you here, whether you choose the delicious, poplar-fringed plains of the Saône, the "waterish" Burgundy that the French king sneers at in "Lear"—he would have gloried in the land had it been his own—or the stern and silent hills of the Jura and the Morvan ”

“ Eudes, Duke of Burgundy, William, Count of Chalon, and other brave nobles, each hurriedly putting down his chlamys, and arming himself with sword or stick, began to cut and thrust, right and left, among the crowd, to open a passage for the cortège, which, with great pomp, was transporting the holy relics to the church of St. Lazarus. This church, too, was so gorged with humanity, that the bearers, breathless with fatigue and fright, and despairing of ever reaching the altar, set down their precious burden upon some wooden planks, where it long remained in the middle of the nave. ”

“ There are good things, too, in the centre of the town—the Flemish belfry in the Place Monge; ancient houses in the Rue de Lorraine; and especially a glimpse of a fifteenth century, pink-washed corner shop, topped by the graceful lantern of the Hospice de la Charité.
Here we are back at Notre Dame, one of the finest churches in Burgundy, but so hemmed in by other buildings that it is not seen to advantage, except from the west side, at a point in the street beyond the Colombier. There only do you get the whole building and the proportions of the tower in good perspective. ”

“ The men of the modern world who own to Burgundy as their patrie are almost too numerous to catalogue, but all will recall the names of Buffon, Guyton de Morveau, Monge and Carnot, Rude, Rameau, Sambin, Greuze and Prud’hon.
In the arts, too, Burgundy has played its own special part, and if the chateau-builder did not here run riot as luxuriously as in Touraine, he at least builded well and left innumerable examples behind which will please the lover of historic shrines no less than the more florid Renaissance of the Loire. ”