Chapter 12

The château 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 châteaux of the Renaissance yet remaining in Brittany. This façade 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 balustrades or galleries of lace-like delicacy, in which are introduced, according to the fashion of the period, the initial letters of the Vicomte Alain, A and V interlaced. The old Rohan motto, "À 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 château is in course of restoration by the Prince de Léon.

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 Porhoët 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 circumstance of a party of washerwomen having refused a glass of water to the Vierge du Ronçier, 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 Ploërmel at four o’clock in the morning for Montfort-sur-Mer, passing through Plélan; 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 Brocéliande, 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 Françoise de Dinan, widow of the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne, when the Montforts left their paternal demesne for the châteaux of Laval, Vitré, and Châteaubriant.

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 Français 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 workmanship; upon which the King observed, "Elles étaient belles, mais qu’il aimait mieux les clefs des cœurs 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 Inférieure and Maine-et-Loire. Lower down is St. Florent (Maine-et-Loire), with its recollections of the wonderful passage 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. "Grâce 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.

Passing 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 Penthièvre family.

Marguerite de Clisson, widow of Jean de Bretagne, Comte de Penthièvre, 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. John V. held his court at Nantes. She sent Oliver there to assure the Duke that his mother and brother were ready to do him homage; and he swore, on his own part, "de le servir envers et contre tous ceux qui peuvent vivre et mourir." John, delighted, made the young man share his bed, and treated him with the greatest distinction. Oliver expressed his regret that the age and infirmities of his mother prevented her going to court, and timidly insinuated the honour she would feel at a visit from the Duke. The Duke consented, and, sending off his plate to Champtoceaux, started with his brother-in-law, Count Oliver, and his attendants. Having passed the little river which separates Anjou from Brittany, they saw a man throwing the planks of the bridge into the water, and thus preventing the Duke’s suite from following. At the same time, Charles de Penthièvre, Margaret’s second son, issued suddenly from a wood with an escort of lances and surrounded the Duke. There was no kind of indignity they did not make him suffer. He was tied upon his horse like a criminal, and conducted first to Clisson, Oliver leading him with a halter round his neck. The Penthièvres, who would not let the place be guessed where they held their captive, conducted him at night, sometimes on foot, from fortress to fortress, from dungeon to dungeon; at the same time circulating the report that they had drowned him in the Loire. As a last insult, they took him to Champtoceaux, where Marguerite visited him in prison to exult over his misfortunes. Meantime the Breton barons, indignant at the treason of which their Sovereign was the victim, raised an army for his deliverance, and civil war broke out with redoubled fury. His heroic wife, Jeanne de France, showed an untiring energy to save him. Undaunted by the threats of the Penthièvres,—who sent word to her, if she did not desist from hostilities they would cut her husband in pieces, nor by the messages from the Duke himself assuring her that her zeal would cost him his life,—she induced her brother, the Dauphin, to order the Penthièvres not to attempt the life of their prisoner; she besieged, one after the other, all their castles, and at last compelled Marguerite to capitulate to save her own life. Finding herself and family in a perilous position, Marguerite agreed that the Duke should be released (he was at Clisson), and that she and her sons should retire where they wished, on their promise to appear at the summons of the Breton nobles. Immediately on his liberation, Duke John ordered the destruction of Champtoceaux. A parliament assembled at Vannes in 1424, condemned Marguerite and her sons to capital punishment, and declared all the Penthièvre possessions to be forfeited to the State. But the culprits had all escaped the kingdom, except the youngest son, William, a child only ten years of age, who had been given as a hostage for the appearance of his mother and brothers, and was condemned to languish for twenty-seven years in prison, where he lost his eyesight—a victim to crimes in which he had not been an accomplice. John had made a vow, during his detention, to give, if he regained his liberty, to the church of Notre Dame at Nantes, his weight in gold; and most conscientiously did he perform his promise, for we read, "He placed himself in his war armour in the balance, and caused the opposite scale to be filled with gold till it had attained the weight of the first; that is to say, three hundred and eighty marks, seven ounces"—which sum was delivered over to the church. Vows of this nature are not unfrequently recorded. When Don Carlos, the ill-fated son of Philip II., lay ill, he vowed to give to the Virgin, on his recovery, four times his weight in gold plate, and seven times his weight in silver. The vow was fulfilled; but the Prince was placed in the scale in a damask robe and fur coat, and weighed only seventy-six pounds—so much was he reduced by his long illness.

Nantes is a cheerful, busy, handsome city, but wanting in the picturesque characteristics of the towns of Lower Brittany. Quimper, Vannes, Rennes, and Nantes, have all been successively capitals of the duchy, but Nantes was the usual residence of its dukes.

The cathedral contains its principal artistic monument, the tomb of Duke Francis II. and his second wife, Marguerite de Foix, called "sein de lys," from the beauty of her complexion. It was erected by their daughter, the Queen-Duchess Anne, and was executed by Michel Colomb, a sculptor of St. Pol de Léon, originally a herd-boy. This monument, considered a masterpiece of the Renaissance, is not copied from any Italian original, but is entirely the offspring of the artist’s own fancy. There is much simplicity in its design and execution. The tomb, about five feet high, is of white marble, diapered with ermine and the letter F. On a black slab repose the effigies of the Duke and Duchess, and at their feet are lying a lion and a greyhound, holding their several escutcheons. Four large allegorical figures are at each angle of the tomb, representing the cardinal virtues. Justice carries the book of the laws, and the sword by which she makes them respected. This figure is said to be the portrait of the Duchess Anne. Temperance, in a monastic dress, is characterised by a bit and a lantern. Prudence, double faced, holds a mirror and a compass, and has a serpent at her feet. This figure is in the costume of a peasant girl of St. Pol; the second face, that of an old man, is also in the dress of Lower Brittany. Strength or Fortitude, handsome, resolute, and calm, strangles a dragon with his grasp.

Upon the principal sides of the tomb are the twelve Apostles, and below, in niches, sixteen mourners (pleureuses) in monastic habits, the faces and hands white, the rest of the body black. The beautiful attitude of these figures is much admired. Some are kneeling, others are seated—all in the attitude and expression of prayer. This monument was originally in the church of the Carmelites, whence it was transferred to the cathedral.

Besides the remains of Duke Francis and his two wives, it formerly contained the heart of his daughter, the Queen-Duchess Anne, enshrined in a golden case in the form of a heart, surmounted by a crown, and surrounded by a cordelière; but the tomb was rifled during the Reign of Terror. It now holds the remains of the Constable Duke Arthur III.

Duke John IV. also died at Nantes, after his long eventful reign, having acquired a military glory which earned him the name of Conqueror, and equalled that of Du Guesclin and Clisson. Twice he lost and twice he regained his crown. He alienated Du Guesclin and his faithful subjects by his partiality to England. The Bretons rose, and he fled to Edward III.; but when Charles V. entered the duchy, with the intention of confiscating it to the crown of France, the Bretons all united to defend their nationality against the ambition of the French King, and recalled their Sovereign. So great was the enthusiasm on his arrival at St. Malo, that the nobles plunged into the water to approach his ship; and even the widow of his rival, Charles of Blois, went to welcome him. His cowardly attempt against the Constable Clisson again compromised his reputation, and was disgracefully avenged upon his son by the implacable daughter of Clisson.

The old ducal castle still rises on the left bank of the river. It was here Anne of Brittany was born, and here she married, 1499, her old admirer, the chivalrous Duke of Orleans, then King Louis XII., according to her stipulation, that the King, "viendra l’espouser en sa maison de Nantes." Left at the age of eleven, by the death of her father, a prey to claimants to her hand, which carried with it the powerful duchy of Brittany, Anne was a prize worth a king’s seeking, even at a time when there were so many other rich heiresses undisposed of—Mary of Burgundy, Elizabeth of York, Isabella of Castille, and Catherine de Foix. Anne is described as handsome, but slightly lame, generous, and gentle, but grave and proud in her demeanour. Louis XII. called her his "fière Bretonne," and allowed her the uncontrolled government of Brittany, "tout ainsi que si elle n’estoit point sa femme."

Though the wife of two Kings of France, Anne never forgot the interests of her duchy, whose nationality she always strove to maintain with the pertinacity of a true Breton, and showed herself, by her spirit and independence, to be the most worthy of all her race to wear the ducal crown. Jean Marot addresses her as "Royne incomparable, deux fois devinement sacrée, Anne Duchesse de Bretagne."

Like most of the ladies of her age, Anne was an accomplished linguist. She understood Latin and Greek, and most of the European languages. She corresponded with her husband in Latin verse. Her letters, still extant, breathe the most tender affection. One, written to him (1499) during the Italian wars, begins, "Une épouse tendre et chérie écrit à son époux encore plus chéri, l’objet à la fois de ses regrets et de son estime, conduit par la gloire loin de sa patrie. Amante infortunée, il n’est pour elle aucun instant sans alarmes. Quel malheur affreux que celui d’être privé d’un Prince que l’on aime, d’un Prince plus amant qu’époux."

It was in this castle that Henry IV. signed his celebrated Edict of Nantes, so fatally revoked by Louis XIV.

The Duc de Mercœur, when governor of Brittany, made Nantes a regular fortified town. Having married Marie de Luxembourg, heiress of the house of Penthièvre, he sought to secure to himself the duchy of Brittany, while his brother, the Duke de Guise, aimed at the crown of France. Head of the League in that province, he looked upon it as a means of attaining his end: his wife joined him in his plans of ambition, and they by turns tyrannized and caressed the Nantais, amusing them with fêtes, in which the Duchess condescended to dance with the townsfolk. For twenty years Mercœur held the province; but a peace was eventually signed between him and Henry IV., through the mediation of Gabrielle d’Estrées, whose son César de Vendôme, then four years of age, was affianced to the Duke de Mercœur’s daughter, then only six. When Henry IV. made his entry into Nantes after the pacification, he observed, on surveying the fortifications, "Ventre Saint Gris, les Ducs de Bretagne n’étaient pas de petits compagnons."

Nantes has been the scene of many an act of vengeance on the part of the Kings of France.

The Place du Bouffay, the place of execution, was the scene of the tragic death of the young Henri de Talleyrand, Comte de Chalais, executed by Louis XIII. for his part in the conspiracy which bears his name. Its object was the death of the Cardinal, and to place the crown on the head of the feeble Gaston, who was celebrating his marriage at Nantes at the time that his victim Chalais was paying the penalty of his crime.

The restless, intriguing Cardinal de Retz was imprisoned in Nantes Castle during the minority of Louis XIV., and made a wonderful escape by letting himself down from the walls to the river, where a boat awaited him. It was also at Nantes that the same monarch caused Fouquet to be arrested, not, as alleged, for his malpractices in office, but because his ambition and pomp offended the pride of his royal master.

For their part in the conspiracy of Cellamare, the Marquis de Poncallec and three other Breton gentlemen suffered on the Place du Bouffay, and the Vendean chief, La Charette, was also there shot in 1795.

Not far from the castle is the Rue Haute du Château. At the Maison Juigny, in this street, the Duchesse de Berri was arrested, after having remained sixteen hours concealed in an aperture behind a chimney on the third floor, scarcely a foot and a half high and four feet long. The police, having information of her being in the house, through the treachery of a Jew, had made a fruitless search, but had left a watch behind. The soldiers lighted a fire in the chimney, and the Duchess, with her three attendants, sallied out, her dress completely scorched. They had endured the heat, but were unable to bear the suffocation.

Nantes has some fine promenades and boulevards, planted with trees. In the Cours Saint Pierre and St. André are statues of the Duchess Anne and of the three Breton constables, Du Guesclin, Clisson, and Richmont.

One of the leading characteristics of Nantes is its numerous bridges: a regular chain of them form a continuous line across the river and canals, and others unite the islands which form the suburbs to the town itself.

The Museum contains a large collection of pictures, which the bequest of the Duke de Feltre (Maréchal Clarke) has increased considerably. These consist mostly of sketches by Paul Delaroche, and the charming Italian subjects of Léopold Robert.

"L’enfant charitable"—a nun on her deathbed embracing a child who is standing by her side, an angel behind—is a touching composition of Ary Schäeffer. Another, by Paul Baudry, represents the death of Marat: Charlotte Corday’s open, handsome face, looks incapable of the crime she has just perpetrated. There is one by Ziegler—Daniel in the lion’s den—an angel staying the lions from molesting him. The atmosphere of light surrounding the angel is wonderful and unearthly. These two are in the general collection, together with numerous examples of the old masters.

Near our hotel is one of the curiosities of Nantes, the Passage de la Pommeraye, consisting of three stories of iron galleries or arcades, uniting the Rue de Crébillon with the Rue de la Fosse. The second arcade communicates by a flight of stairs with the third, called the Galerie de la Fosse, opening upon the street of that name.

The Garden of Plants is beautifully laid out; groves and avenues of magnolias in full flower, with rocks, waterfalls, rustic bridges, all most picturesquely disposed, making it one of the prettiest gardens and public promenades in France.

We descended the Loire by steamer, passing by vast granite buildings, built as magazines for colonial imports, called Les Salorges, in front of which the horrible noyades of Carrier took place, and these warehouses served as a temporary place of confinement for the victims. We next steamed past the island of Indret, the great manufacture of steam-engines for the State. Here we landed some market women, in caps of the same form, with high combs, as those of clear muslin worn by the Nantaises, only of a coarse material, and edged with black. On the right was Couëron, where Duke Francis II. died in consequence of a fall from his horse. The battle of St. Aubin-du-Cormier had decided his fate and that of his daughters,—a humiliation from which he never recovered. His faithful friend Rieux, who commanded his army, defeated by the youthful Louis de la Trémouille; the chivalrous Louis of Orleans, a prisoner in an iron cage in the "Grosse Tour" at Bourges; and the safety of his daughters at the mercy of King Charles VIII., or worse, of his imperious sister, the Regent Anne de Beaujeu, who would have committed some act of spoliation, had not the Chancellor Rochefort saved the duchy by his integrity, declaring to Anne that "a conqueror without right is but an illustrious robber."

At Les Pellerins, barges were loading with hay, and heaps of it standing on the river’s edge ready for embarkation. On the left bank is Paimbœuf, where diligences run to Pornic, a favourite little watering-place south of the Loire.

St. Nazaire is a bustling seaport town, now the point of departure of the transatlantic steamers for the West Indies and Mexico. A Mexican, in his picturesque costume, all the seams of his dress fringed with hanging silver buttons, was living in the same hotel with ourselves. St. Nazaire has now a large floating basin, opened in 1858, capable of holding 200 ships of large size, and another is in course of construction.