Raymond of Poitiers

“ The ramparts of the city are exceedingly interesting and extensive. In the modern hôtel de ville are a series of wall decorations by Puvis de Chavannes. The Hôtel d'Aquitaine (sixteenth century) , in the Grand Rue, was the former residence of the Priors of St. John of Jerusalem.
The Chronique de Maillezais tells of a former bishop of Poitiers who, about the year 1114, sought to excommunicate that gay prince and poet, William, the ninth Count of Poitiers, the earliest of that race of poets known as the troubadours. ”

“ On the following morning he had taken his departure before the ecclesiastics had risen, leaving the servants, who were to follow with the horses, to make them fully aware that they had been his guests during their stay at the inn; and on the third day, at about five o'clock in the afternoon, he came under the high rocky banks which guard the entrance to the ancient city which was to be the end of his journey.
CHAPTER VI. THE LADY AND HER LOVERS.
The city of Poitiers is a beautiful old town, at least it is a town in which there is much to interest ”

“ Two hours of easy running through the bright September sunshine brought us to the Palais Hôtel in Poitiers before noon—Poitiers, the city of old Romanesque churches and older traditions, where are living so many of the vieille noblesse who would rather eat dry bread than make their sons work. The echoes of Parisian rush do not penetrate these quiet streets. The people drink tilleul after lunch instead of coffee. The effect is to make them drowsy. In fact, we have seldom visited a place with such an atmosphere of slumber. ”

“ Much of old Poitiers has been destroyed; and new Poitiers is by no means beautiful. It is better, therefore, except in a few instances, to forget that modern hands have touched the sacred spot, and endeavour to enjoy the reminiscences still left, of which there are a great number full of interest and variety. ”

“ Poitiers (34) , the capital of the dep. of Vienne, 61 m. SW. of Tours; has a number of interesting buildings, a university and large library; in its neighbourhood Clovis defeated Alaric II. in 507, Charles Martel the Moors in 732, and the Black Prince the troops of King John in 1356.
Poitou, formerly a province in France, lying S. of the Loire, between the Vienne River and the sea; passed to England when its countess, Eleanor, married Henry I., 1152; was taken by Philip Augustus 1205, ceded to England again 1360, and retaken by Charles V. 1369. ”

“ At Poitiers he visited Queen Radegunda, who lived there in retirement, and she induced him to prolong his stay in the city indefinitely. Here he also enjoyed the friendship of the famous Gregory of Tours and other eminent ecclesiastics. He was elected bishop of Poitiers in 599, and died about 609. ”

“ Poitiers has many winding, narrow lanes of curious old houses. It is not a busy commercial city, but it does not lack an air of comfort and prosperity. The town has to-day a population of over thirty thousand souls.{170}
ROUEN THE fascination of this ancient city of Normandy consists not only in its historical associations and its splendid cathedral, but in the fine setting, colour, and aspect of the place. Rouen should be approached, if possible, by boat on the Seine. ”

“ Poitiers belongs to so many ages—Gaul, Roman, Visigoth, Frank, English—that it holds a place in every great event which has occurred in France during the last nineteen centuries. Four important battles were fought in its neighbourhood: those of Clovis, of Charles Martel, of Edward of England, and of Henry III. of France; all these struggles brought about results of the utmost consequence to the country. The fields where these battles were fought are still pointed out, though the site of each is violently contested by antiquarians. ”

“ It was from this slight eminence that scouts riding out in front of Edward’s army saw, massed upon that road and advancing westward across their view, a considerable body of vehicles escorted by armed men. It was the rearguard and the train of King John.
A man following to-day that great road between Poitiers and Chauvigny eastward, notes a spinney and a farm lying respectively to the right and to the left of his way, some four kilometres from the gate of Poitiers, and not quite three from the famous megalith of the “Lifted Stone,” which is a matter of immemorial reverence for the townsfolk. ”

“ If memories are precious, Poitiers is uncommon rich.
As if to console us for our departure, the road to Sister Angoulême was superb. Broad, straight, smooth as any floor, the great highway stretched like a strip of marquetry inlaid upon the countryside. Its invitation was irresistible....
We reached the windy town in time for a late tea.
As soon as this was over, Berry and I escaped and carried Pong off to a garage, there to be oiled and greased against the morrow's race. Somewhat to our amusement, before we had been there ten minutes, our cousin arrived with Ping and the same object. ”

“ Armies defending a whole countryside, notably the French armies defending French territory during the Hundred Years’ War, levied, swept up, or got as volunteers masses of untrained men. Expeditions abroad had none such: they had no use for them. Edward had none at Crécy and his son had none at Poitiers ”

“ But no, no, Albert, I stand not in your way; there are other attractions for me, I tell you fairly! Even if it were not so, let every man in love, as in war, do the best for himself. But, at all events, I tell you take care of yourself if you go to Poitiers, unless, indeed, you have some better armour than the thought of rivalry with me."
"I must go to Poitiers of course," replied the Count, "when the governor comes down ”

“ CHAPTER VII.
notre dame—the keys—the miracle—procession—st. radegonde—tomb of the saint—foot-print—little loubette—the count outwitted—the cordelier—late justice—the templars.
Poitiers is one of the largest towns in France, but is very thinly inhabited; immense gardens, orchards, and fields, extend between the streets; the spaces are vast, but there is no beauty whatever [103] in the architecture or the disposition of the buildings. The squares are wide and open, but surrounded by irregular, slovenly-looking houses, without an approach to beauty or elegance ”

“ The retreat of the Prince was a great triumph for the warlike Bishop, who lost no time in proceeding to Tours (where the Court had already arrived) , at the head of two hundred of his supporters, to entreat of their Majesties to proceed at once to Poitiers, in order to restore public confidence. His reception by the Regent was gracious in the extreme, nor did the young sovereign fail to express to the exulting prelate his own sense of obligation. At Poitiers the Court was met by the most enthusiastic acclamations: their Majesties honoured the election of the new mayor with their presence ”

“ Poitou has been called the paradise for lovers of Romanesque architecture.
In Notre Dame-la-Grande are some XII-century frescoes, but its modern experiment in polychromy is distressing. Many a gathering has the ancient church seen. When in 1100 a church council at Poitiers censured the illegal marriage of the king of France and the fair Bertrada de Montfort, Guillaume IX, the troubadour duke of Aquitaine who was present—and in much the same predicament, living with the wife of a neighboring lord—made a scene and indignantly left the hall. ”

“ The Route Nationale from Paris to Bayonne, along part of which we've lately travelled, is good nearly all the way. From Dangé to Poitiers is a splendid bit, and up to Poitiers one climbs a considerable hill. It's a cheerful town, with a fine cathedral, and lively streets full of red-legged soldiers, rather weedy and shambling fellows, like most French conscripts. Beyond Poitiers the road is one long, exhilarating switchback-you rush down one hill, climb another, swoop again into a hollow, and so on, the road unrolling itself like a great white tape. ”

“ Why must the one snatch things from the other? Why must the one covet the other’s goods?’
Living at Poitiers Radegund was close to the scene of these turmoils. The cities of Tours and Poitiers had fallen to the share of Charibert. When he died in 562 his kingdom was divided between his three brothers by cities rather than by districts. Tours and Poitiers fell to Sigebert of Rheims, who was comparatively peace-loving among these brothers. But his brother Chilperic of Soissons, dissatisfied with his own share, invaded Touraine and Poitou and forced Poitiers to submit to him. ”

“ When I say, as I have said with regard both to Crécy and to Poitiers—though it is truer of Crécy than of Poitiers—that the [Pg 106] number of combatants whom contemporaries recognised as such was far less than the total numbers of a force, I was pointing out that, by our method of reckoning numbers, it would be foolish to count Edward III.’s army in 1346 as only 24,000, or the Black Prince’s ten years later as only 7000. The actual number of males upon the march who had to be fed and could be seen standing upon the field was far larger. ”

“ In so far as an action in those days could carry a national effect—that is, could be regarded by distant civilian populations as proof of strength or weakness in contrasting races and societies—Poitiers had not even the claim of Crécy; for it was not principally an archers’ but a knights’ battle, and the knights were mainly the gentry of the South of France, while those who had been broken by the only cavalry movement of the engagement were not even French knights, but levies of German, Spanish, and other origin. ”

“ The entertainment was kept up late; many of the guests scarcely departed before daylight; those who were invited to remain the night at the governor's house, retired when they thought fit; and every one acknowledged that this was the most splendid and the most agreeable fête that had been given in Poitiers for many years. What were the feelings, however, of the Count de Morseiul as, at an hour certainly not later than one in the morning, he sought his own apartments? We must not afford those feelings much space ”

“ It was no longer the city of Poitiers, with its multitudes and its gay parties; it was no longer the château, with its lord and his attendants; it was no longer the country town, with its citizens and its artizans; but it was upon one of those dark brown moors of which so many are to be found on the borders of Brittany and Poitou, under the canopy of heaven alone, and with nothing but the bleakest objects in nature round about. ”

“ The biographies of the troubadours, which, in spite of their imperfection and conventionality of form, throw an unparalleled light upon medieval literary life, may perhaps be most conveniently treated in connexion with the courts at which each group of them flourished. It is in Poitou that we trace them first, where Guilhem, count of Poitiers, who reigned from 1087 to 1127, was both the earliest patron and the earliest poet of the school. ”

“ To encourage missionary activity, Clement V ordered that Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic be taught publicly at Rome, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca.
The Hundred Years’ War, so fatal to French architectural progress, surged round Poitiers. After Crécy, in 1346, the hall of the Counts’ Palace was damaged by the English. In the environs of Poitiers took place the bitter French defeat of 1356, when King Jean le Bon was made prisoner. “Et fut là morte toute la fleur de chevalerie de France,” says Froissart. The siege by Duguesclin to recapture the hill city from the English damaged its monuments. ”

“ The head of the column, with the king himself, we must presume to have ridden through the gate of Poitiers before or about noon, but the last contingents were spread out along the road behind him when, in that same morning or early afternoon of Saturday, the outriders of the Anglo-Gascon force appeared upon the fields to the north.
It was an encounter as sudden as it was dramatic. The countryside at this point consists in wide, open fields, the plough-lands of a plateau which rises about one hundred feet above the level of the rivers. ”

“ But it was not the captains of the Companies alone who were Gascons, French, and Bretons. The nobles throughout Guyenne were more than half of them on the English side. The famous commander who did so much towards achieving the victory of Poitiers was a Frenchman, the Captal de Buch, Jean de Greuilly, Constable of Aquitaine for the English crown. ”

“ With this place in his possession, as it was reasonable to suppose it soon might be, he would enjoy a secure passage across the river Loire into Brittany, Anjou, and more distant provinces, as he already had access by the bridge of La Charité to Burgundy, Champagne, and the German frontier. Unfortunately the majority of the generals regarded it as a matter of more immediate importance to capture Poitiers, a rich and populous city, said at that time to cover more ground than any other city in France, with the single exception of Paris. ”

“ The main road from Châtellerault to Poitiers runs on the further side of the Clain from this triangle, and the Black Prince, by engaging himself in the wedge between the rivers, would thus have a stream between his column and the natural marching route of any force which might approach him from the fortified city which he feared. ”

“ We were not sorry that nothing more was likely to arrive at Poitiers for us, as we were to pay so much for the delivery. It appears that strangers rarely remain more than a few hours here, which may account for so much interest being excited in the solitary town by our strolling. ”