CHAPTER IX

_The Siege and the Breach_, 1568

‘Le canon battait nos murailles. La Vierge, comme un bouclier, Au choc terrible des batailles Opposait son blanc tablier.

Le plomb, dans sa course rapide, Devant la Vierge se courbait, Et l’obus, au vol homicide, Sans bruit, dans son giron tombait.’ L. JOLLIET.

Plague and famine weighed heavily upon Chartres throughout the sixteenth century; not less heavily the wars of François I. and of Henry IV., and the continual contributions in money which she was called upon to make in order to enable them to be waged. Year by year, under the three curses of that age--plague, soldiers, and impositions--the exhaustion of the city increased. She was able, however, to receive with sufficient magnificence the occasional visits of kings and princes. Particularly splendid was the reception accorded to Mary Queen of Scots, when, at the age of six, she was brought here in state by the Constable de Montmorency and the Duc d’Aumale. And the period in which Jean de Beauce wrought the Clocher and the Clôture of the Cathedral cannot have been one of abject poverty.

Royal visits to the town were not altogether wasteful. Not only did they, in the ordinary course of things, stimulate trade, but they also served the cause of sanitation. For on such great occasions, and on such occasions only, the streets were cleaned. Street police was still quite in its infancy; hygiene an art scarce beginning to be practised. We find mention of an order in 1526 forbidding swineherds to allow the animals in their charge (_bêtes porchines de M. S. Antoine_) to wander about the streets. But this was an unpopular measure, and stood rather as a pious opinion of the more enlightened than as an effective piece of legislation. Things were but little better than they had been when the heir of Louis-le-Gros, riding in the Rue S. Jean in Paris, was thrown from his horse by an abbot’s pig, and died of his injuries.

The vile odour that arose from the narrow, ill-paved, uncleansed passages called streets, filled with the rotting garbage which so tempted the pigs, is not pleasant even to imagine. Little wonder that here, as at Paris, where the same reign of mud and dirt obtained, the plague broke out again and again.

In one of these outbreaks Chartres lost no less than 8000 of its inhabitants. As in Paris, and later in London, the houses tainted by the plague were marked with a cross, and persons who were infected by it were obliged to carry a white wand in the streets. But people have always been curiously slow to learn the lessons of sanitation. The open sewer, the filthy water, the system of burial, the state of the dwelling-houses, the tradition of personal uncleanliness, these were all powerful friends of the pest in every mediæval town.

‘You have,’ Voltaire wrote later of Paris, ‘slaughter-houses in back streets with no issue, which give out in summer a cadaverous odour capable of poisoning an entire quarter.’ On this point at any rate Chartres was superior to Paris. For in the sixteenth century public slaughter-houses (massacre--the name still marks a section of the river) were erected in an appropriate place. But the butchers did not take kindly to them. In spite of frequent pains and penalties, it was long before the inveterate habit of slaughtering animals and throwing their blood into the streets was abandoned.

As to the streets, the authorities contented themselves for the most part with quite platonic aspirations that they should be watered and cleaned. But on great occasions, as I have said, cleaned they were, along with the roads, passages and bridges. Such an occasion was the visit of the King and Queen in 1550, with the Dauphin and his young _fiancée_, Mary Stuart.

The masters and companions of each trade and mystery, and the pages of honour to accompany the King on horse and foot were carefully selected; and costumes were as nicely chosen. The Lieutenant-General de Hérouad indeed issued an order calling upon the citizens, on pain of forfeit and arrest, to array themselves for the ceremony in velvet, satin, taffetas, and other rich garments. Triumphal arches were raised before the gates. At the cross roads scaffoldings were erected and decorated with tapestries and gilt, whereon plays and mysteries were to be performed.

These elaborate arrangements, however, ended in a lamentable fiasco. As the _cortège_ wound its way out of the Porte Drouaise to meet the King and Queen a violent storm burst over them, and compelled them all, Lieutenant-General included, to seek refuge in the Church of S. Maurice and the neighbouring houses, in order to save their gala clothes from ruin. At the same moment, unfortunately, the King and Queen left the road of Josaphat, which they were following, and made a short cut for the town, where they arrived without meeting a soul to welcome them.

As the key and granary of Paris, Chartres began to be the favourite garrison town of the French army, and was obliged to contribute accordingly to the expenses of huge masses of men quartered on her.

Meantime, the County of Chartres was raised to a Duchy in favour of Rénée, daughter of the late King Louis XII. and Anne de Bretaigne, on the occasion of her marriage with Hercules d’Éste, son of the Duke of Ferrara. A more profitable honour befell the town a few years later, when a judicial tribunal was set up here, a step which tended in some degree to lessen the excessive expenses and delays of the law. This was done in 1552, and in 1566 Charles IX. authorised the merchants and various trades, who were groaning under the exactions of the _procureurs_ and the ruinous procedure of the _gens du baillage_, to choose a merchant judge and four colleagues (consuls) in the town of Chartres. This tribunal was intended to deal with business affairs. The bailiffs and attorneys, seeing in the creation of a Tribunal of Commerce a severe blow to their interests, did their utmost to frustrate it. But the Tribunal got itself established none the less in the House and Meeting-place of the Merchants, as they then called it; the Maison des Vieux-Consuls, as it came to be known later, after the consuls had transferred the scene of their labours elsewhere.

The ‘House of the Old Consuls’ in the Rue des Écuyers, facing the entrance of the Rue de la Petite-Boucherie de Bourg, is not in itself remarkable, save as the seat and cradle of municipal justice in Chartres. For that purpose it was well placed, being in the centre of the steep old streets of the lower town and near the river, round which, as we have seen, clustered numerous industries. The site was originally just within the old walls of the ninth century, and it is possible that the house was part of the old Tour du Roy. But it was completely rebuilt in the seventeenth century, and were it not for the fifteenth-century entrance, and the extremely picturesque circular staircase with its elegant and curious carving (early sixteenth century), it would be of no account. This staircase is known as the _Escalier de la Reine Berthe_--Queen Bertha’s Staircase. The name apparently is quite modern, and there is no explanation of it which can claim to be certainly correct.

The Queen Bertha indicated may be either the wife of Eudes I., Count of Chartres, who afterwards married King Robert, and who, when he was forced to repudiate her, came to live in the old castle at Chartres, where she ended her days striving to forget her ephemeral greatness and succouring the poor; or, and this seems more likely, it may be Bertha, sister of Count Thibault III., widow of the Duke of Aquitaine, who spent her widowhood at Chartres in this quarter of the town, a fact which has survived in tradition and is confirmed by a document of 1069. For there is mention of the house of the Countess between the Tour du and the Porte Cendreuse (_camera comitissa inter Turrim et portam Cinerosam_).

Of other old wooden houses in Chartres the most famous for its carving and its picturesqueness is the Maison du Saumon in the Place de la Poissonnerie, No. 10, so called from the huge salmon which is carved upon one of the beams, and recalls the fact that Poissonnerie means Fish-market. And No. 49 Rue des Changes is also distinguished by its carving. The Étape-au-vin we have already mentioned.

* * * * *

The sixteenth century in France was an epoch of confusion and distress, but from the chaos that then prevailed modern civilisation sprang. Two great historic facts dominate that epoch: the Renaissance of art and letters and the religious Reformation. They were naturally not wholly disconnected. Gutenberg was the forerunner of Luther. The revival of interest in the intellectual treasures of antiquity introduced into a society formed by Catholicism and feudalism a new comparison. The languages, politics, art, philosophy and religious beliefs of Rome and Athens were contrasted for the first time in the light of history with those of an organisation already exhausted by the length of its duration and the poison of its own vices. To this extent the intellectual awakening of the sixteenth century, with its new study of things old, led up to and aided the Reformation. But the idea of reform was not new. It had appeared and been repressed many times and in many countries from the twelfth century onwards. The authority of the Councils and the rigour of the punishments directed against it had succeeded in choking the movement hitherto, for it is one of the most inaccurate of commonplaces which asserts that persecution only succeeds in promoting the cause it endeavours to check. The Reformation was for hundreds of years quite successfully checked by persecution. But it came at last when, in the fulness of time, the minds of men were enlightened by the new spirit of discovery, inquiry and learning, and when the authority of the Church was weakened by the schisms and depravity of its representatives. The country which had invented the printing press, that powerful engine for the dissemination of ideas, sent forth also Luther. The shock of the revolt inaugurated by him struck France at a moment when, in the person of François I., the prerogatives of the Crown were almost without limit, and the regal splendour in which the King delighted dazzled every eye. François did not at first perceive the political tendencies of the Reformation, and he allowed the Protestant doctrines to be cherished even at his own Court. Marguerite de Valois, his sister, openly encouraged Protestantism, and Clément Marot, his favourite poet, translated for the use of the Reformers the Psalms into French. That charming poet and witty epigrammatist had started in life with the intention of never giving offence or rousing inconvenient opposition. Like Rabelais, he was ready to espouse a cause with an enthusiasm that was warm indeed but stopped short of burning point (jusqu’au feu exclusivement).

‘Tant de brouillis qu’en justice on tolère Je l’écrirois, mais je crains la colère, L’oisiveté des prêtres et cagots Je la dirois, _mais gare les fagots_; Et des abus dont l’Église est fourrée, J’en parlerois, mais gare la bourrée.’

So he had written. But his zeal or his art soon outran his discretion. He provoked the enmity which he deprecated. Pursued by the hatred of the Lady of Annet, Diane de Poitiers, of the poet Sagon and the inquisitor Jean Bouchard, the satirist was imprisoned more than once, and at last banished in poverty.

Chartres was the last place in which Calvinism was likely to be popular. Marot, there, was as unwelcome as his Psalms. He was seized and imprisoned in the Tour de Roy. The courts recently established in the town were active in the suppression of heresy, and burnt their first victims at the stake in 1553, ‘_qui ne se voulurent jamais confesser ny reconnoistre nostre bon Dieu et sauveur Jesus, ny la benoiste vierge Marie_.’ As time went on the inquisitions grew more exacting. Their increasing severity drew forth increasing resistance on the part of the Protestants. More Huguenots were burnt and hundreds were banished from the town. A bishop, suspected of favouring their cause, was quickly denounced and cited to Rome. He departed amidst popular execration. Chartres remained enthusiastically Catholic of the Catholics. The Church festivals were celebrated with renewed pomp in the Cathedral, and the Mystery of Abraham was performed with impressive solemnity.

From the commencement of the religious wars, Louis, Prince of Condé, head of the Protestant League, ‘for the maintenance of the pure worship of God and the due observance of the edicts,’ turned his attention to the country of the Orléanais in order to facilitate his communications with the South. Hoping to avenge the catastrophe of Rouen, he made a bold movement from Orléans upon Paris. But after meeting with a severe check at Corbeil, he was obliged to fall back upon Normandy, devastating and burning La Beauce on his way. He had vainly called upon Chartres to open her gates to him. ‘Never,’ was the bold reply he received from the governor. ‘I hold the town for the King, and if your army attacks this place it will prove their cemetery!’ Condé continued to retire northwards. The Royal army engaged him under the walls of Dreux, and there the first pitched battle of the war was fought. It resulted, after an arduous struggle, in a hard-won victory for the Catholics. Eight thousand corpses strewed the plain, and whilst Montmorency remained prisoner in the hands of the Protestants, Condé himself was a captive to the Royalists. The pacific arrangement which was made shortly afterwards was not of long duration. The fierce persecution commenced by the Duke of Alva against their brethren in the Netherlands roused, not without reason, the apprehension as well as the indignation of the French Reformers. The Huguenots rose and moved upon Paris. A drawn battle was fought in the plain of S. Denis.

Chartres had but a moment’s respite. It was employed with feverish activity in making preparations for defence. The inhabitants were commanded to lay in provisions for two months. The watchmen installed in the Clocher Neuf were instructed to make the following signals:--On the first appearance of the enemy three strokes of the bell, three more if the enemy advanced towards the town. If they were cavalry a tapering banner was to be flown, if infantry a square one, and if the Huguenots tried to rush upon the suburbs the tocsin was to be rung. A bell was placed at each gate to correspond with that of the watch, and to summon the quarter to arms. Urgent appeals were sent to the King for aid, who replied by despatching some troops with Jean de Bourdeilles, Baron d’Ardelay, to superintend, in conjunction with Antoine de Linières and his garrison, the defence of the town. They busied themselves with placing some artillery in position, and establishing a bullet manufactory. The church bells were melted to supply the forge.

On the approach of the enemy the bridges over the Eure outside the town were destroyed. On the last day of February, 1568, the Huguenot army, commanded by the gallant Condé himself, encamped at Lèves and Josaphat, and in the suburbs about the gates Drouaise, Guillaume, Morard and S. Michel. Their numbers are given variously at 10,000 and 45,000 men. Their artillery consisted of only five siege pieces and four small culverins. The first four days of March were employed by the enemy in fortifying their positions, and by the Catholic Chartrains in skirmishing about the environs and setting fire to the suburbs of the town. M. de Linières, their vigorous leader, who was afterwards to meet his death on the battlefield of Jarnac, destroyed, as a necessary measure of war, Mainvilliers, and the monasteries of the Franciscans (with its splendid library) and of S. John. The Huguenots, on the other hand, endeavoured to preserve some buildings which might afford them cover, but they destroyed the Churches of S. Chéron and S. Barthélemy, which could be of no use to them.

These preliminaries gave the inhabitants of Chartres time to complete an entrenchment stretching from the Monastery of S. Père to the Porte Morard, and to construct also a platform near the convent of the Sœurs-de-S.-Paul, on which was mounted a cannon named _La Huguenotte_, which had been taken from the enemy at the Battle of Dreux. This piece did such good service during the siege that it soon earned the name of ‘The Good Catholic!’

On the 5th of March the German soldiers, the Reiters and Lanskenets of the enemy, took up a position at the entrance of S. Maurice and at the Filles-Dieu, and opened two batteries, one opposite the Porte Drouaise, masked by the walls of the house _Trois-Maures_, the other in the enclosure of the Filles-Dieu, intending to take the same gate on the flank. The bombardment began on the following day.

The householders had watched the forces of their enemy gathering from this side and that, and knew that at last the dreaded circle was complete. They knew that Condé was in command, and had sworn to ruin their Cathedral, to scatter the relics stored there, and to feed his horse at the high altar. They knew that his soldiers were eager to ‘ruin and annihilate the most beautiful building in France that remained as yet undefiled by them, namely, this devout and excellent temple of the Church of Notre-Dame de Chartres, the terror and despair of the heretics.’[87] But in spite of this knowledge and preparation the opening cannonade took the people of Chartres, as two hundred years later it took the people of Paris, by surprise.[88] It was early in the day. A crowd of worshippers filled the Church of S. Foy (S. Faith, Rue d’Harleville), which was built partly on the ramparts. At the conclusion of the Mass the Sacrament was to be carried to a sick person. Touched by unusual devotion at this perilous time, the whole assembly rose to escort the procession on its way, passing out slowly, group after group, as if by mechanical instinct, the more reluctant led on by the general consent. At last the church was quite emptied, when, it is said, a shower of massy stones from the culverins or great cannon of the besiegers fell suddenly upon it, and the entire roof of the place sank into the empty space beneath.

The rebuilding of the little chapel rendered necessary by this disaster accounts for the Flamboyant style of architecture which it now represents. Originally it had been dedicated in the time of S. Fulbert, and was enlarged and raised to the dignity of a parish church in the days of S. Ives. It was horribly profaned during the Revolution, being converted into a _Salle de Spectacle_ by a decree of the Municipal Council in 1794 on the motion of one Morin, an architect. It was not till 1857, on the same day as the Druidical Virgin, Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, was restored to the traditional place in the crypt, that the church passed again by purchase into clerical hands and was carefully restored.

The changes and degradations which it has undergone have left little worth studying in what was once the parish church of the most populous quarter in the town.

Whatever damage it did elsewhere (and a few days later a neighbouring church was crushed like S. Foy, but with all its good people inside), the cannonade directed against the Porte Drouaise on two sides at once failed in its object. For the ravelin proved a sufficient protection for the besieged. It therefore

became necessary for the Huguenots to get possession of this advanced work. One of them, Du Bordet[89] by name, slipped with some pioneers into the ditch and began to sap, but being perceived by the defenders above, was shot down by an arquebus, and his men were unable to resist a sortie with which the arquebusiers followed up this success. On the same day the enemy were foiled in their endeavour to establish themselves near the suburb of S. Brice. But next morning the Huguenots, after a prolonged cannonade, effected a breach, and endeavoured to take by assault the ravelin from which they had been repulsed the night before. They were for a moment successful, but M. de Linières bravely recovered this important position. ‘Incontinent,’ wrote the contemporary historian, Simon de Gives, in his _Bref Discours du Siège mis devant la Ville de Chartres_,[90] ‘Incontinent, the said seigneur began to pledge the captains who were near him, boldly resolute, with a heart not sad but joyful rather, drooping his head a little, and began to throw down planks to take the place of the bridge which the cannon had broken by force. These captains, wishing to show their generous courage and doing their duty marvellous well, entered the ravelin which the enemy had seized and held. Their own men, to recover it, engaged the Huguenots in a hand-to-hand fight, and being thus mixed together, the enemy were right manfully repulsed, and left many of their number dead within the ditch.’

At the same time the enemy had made an attack upon the ravelin of the Porte S. Michel, and were repulsed there also. But not without loss to the Chartrains. The brave D’Ardelay, colonel of the Gascons, received then a wound in the eye, of which he died some days later. Of his burial in the Cathedral and its sequel we have already spoken above.[91]

The failure of their efforts against the Porte Drouaise induced the Huguenots to direct their attention to the stretch of wall running from that gate to the Tower des Herses de Lethinière. And here it was that they established the breach so famous in the annals of Chartres. The whole of the 8th of March their batteries from the Clos-l’Évêque and the Filles-Dieu played upon the wall, and by two o’clock on the following afternoon a breach thirty feet wide had been made. The capable and energetic governor of the town, M. de Linières, had taken every possible measure of precaution to forestall the ill effects of the bombardment. As the breach widened a strong entrenchment was disclosed constructed of earth and bags of wool. A thousand workmen, soldiers and civilians, worked unceasingly at the task of throwing it up and strengthening it. Under pain of cord and gibbet, the inhabitants were impressed for the work. Night and day they toiled, and their toil was crowned with success. The Huguenots, seeing that there was no chance of delivering an assault with success, contented themselves with firing some salvoes on the 10th and 11th, and then shifted their artillery opposite the Porte Morard. There they began to endeavour, by destroying a large dam, to divert the course of the river, which ran through the lower town, and supplied the forces of the water-mills. This move, in spite of the wind-mills which M. de Linières had made at once, would very likely have been attended with serious results, had not rumours of peace begun to reach the ears of the belligerents. A truce, preliminary to the Peace of Longjumeau, was proclaimed. The Huguenots made haste to quit the town they had so unsuccessfully besieged. They removed their artillery on the 14th, and next day saw the last of their battalions disappear down the roads of Bonneval and Illiers.

‘Thus, after fourteen days of struggle and vain assault,’ exclaims our triumphant chronicler Rouillard, ‘the enemy were compelled to retire with great loss and slaughter, and to give once more occasion for the name _des Reculés_ (_see_ p. 47), to the quarter in the midst of which they had proudly raised their accursed tents.’ Disappointed of the plunder of the Cathedral treasure and of the pillage of the town upon which they had counted--for Condé himself had sold beforehand the lead of the Cathedral roof--they retired discomfited, to conclude the Peace of Longjumeau--_La Paix boiteuse et mal assise_, as it was called, because one of the negotiators was named Malassise, and the other was lame.

In memory of this deliverance it was decreed at Chartres that a solemn annual procession should take place on the 15th of March; that part of the street S. André should take the name of Rue de la Brèche, and that a commemorative inscription should be graven on the reconstructed wall.

In connection with the procession referred to we must mention the _Tour de Ville_, as it is called, or _La Chandelle du Tour_, or _Le Tour de cire_. This was a huge yellow wax candle, rolled on a wooden cylinder, and weighing as much as 220 pounds. ‘From time immemorial,’ the archives record, ‘the town of Chartres has been wont to maintain this candle before the Black Virgin of the pillar in front of the jubé. It was instituted originally by the community of the said town as an oblation for the safety of the town, and was to burn before the said image.’ Every day a piece was cut off and burnt on the town candlestick. For many years the _Tour de la Ville_ was presented at one or other of the Church festivals indifferently, very often on the 17th of October, the Feast of the Dedication of the Cathedral. But in the seventeenth century it was decided that the presentation should take place on the 15th of March, the anniversary of the deliverance of the town from the siege of the Huguenots. The ceremony was very popular. All the officials of the town attended. Before the procession started the Mayor (for he had come into existence by that time), or, occasionally, some great man who happened to be the guest of the town at the time, lit the first candle before the shrine of the Black Virgin. Thereafter the _Tour de Ville_ was carried in the procession to the breach. This custom lasted on to the days of the Revolution.

You can imagine the procession winding its way from the Cathedral down the steep curves of the Rue Muret towards the Place Drouaise and the Pont Neuf where once was the Porte Drouaise. Those who took part in it would pause, perhaps, and read the inscription let into the ramparts and engraved on two stones six feet long by three high which recorded the events of the siege in the Latin tongue for the instruction and example of posterity. One of the stones is, I gather, still preserved in the garden belonging to Madame Tillionbois de Valeuil and may be seen from the Pont Neuf. Pursuing their way up the Rue de la Brèche, the procession would next arrive at the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche on their left. Let the reader enter this tiny chapel, after noticing the arms sculptured above the window, and he will find himself face to face with a statue of the Virgin which rests on the keystone of the old chapel erected in 1599 in memory of this event, and near the site of the famous breach.

About the altar are numerous cannon-balls of stone which are relics of the siege. Entering the large annex on the right the visitor will now perceive a still more curious relic of the siege--the fourteenth or fifteenth-century statue of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, whose name was graven on the keystone above mentioned. And if he inquire how that name was earned he will be told that this is the very statue which was set over the Porte Drouaise and, by a miraculous intervention, saved the town. For the contemporary chronicler Duparc informs us that ‘For all that the chiefs of the Huguenot army were esteemed the greatest soldiers in Europe, yet were they miraculously blinded by a manifest miracle. And the miracle was on this wise. There was on the Porte Drouaise an image of Our Lady against which the enemy fired many shots from cannon and arquebus alike, but without being able to hit it. And to show that many shots were fired at the said gate on which was the said image, the bridge of that gate was broken and cut in twain by the cannon-balls, and all round the image up to a few inches of it the marks of many bullets may still be seen. But it was hit by never a one, and it remained therefore whole and intact; in spite of the efforts of the enemy to destroy that image, it was never struck by a single shot. I know well,’ he adds, ‘that the heretics and some others laugh at this, but Herod also mocked at Christ when he beheld Him.’

Another version of this miracle is given by Chaline (b. 1596) in his old _Histoire de Chartres_. ‘The Huguenots,’ he says, ‘having drawn near on the 9th of March to enter the town by the breach which they had made, it happened that there appeared on the said breach opposite to them a tall lady holding a child in her arms, against whom they fell to firing and to hurling volleys of abuse, without being able to reach or strike her in any way _terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata_. On the contrary, the bullets which they fired fell harmless, without effect or force, at the foot of the wall, and they, thinking to enter, found themselves repulsed. The Chartrains perceiving this, and knowing that it was the Holy Virgin who, with her Son, was thus visibly taking the defence of the town into her own hands, the ecclesiastics and women turned to pray, and the men of war and all capable of bearing arms made a sortie upon the besiegers and vigorously repelled them.’

By a further development, the popular tradition of the country, so prettily expressed in the verses of M. Jolliet which I have put at the head of this chapter, now maintains that the Virgin caught the bullets in the folds of her mantle.

The chapel founded in 1599 was destroyed during the Revolution and rebuilt in 1843. Leaving this chapel and pursuing its way along the street, the procession would next arrive at the Parish Church of S. André and the adjoining Chapel of S. Nicholas, and then, after singing an anthem there before the bas-relief which commemorated events of the siege, would make its way up the steep ascents back to the Cathedral.

The Church of S. André, as seen in its ruins and desecration to-day, presents one of the most offensive examples of callous profanation in France. When you have mastered your disgust with the disastrous and discreditable fact that this once magnificent building is used as a municipal lumber-room, you begin to perceive that its remains are still beautiful, and you regret the more keenly the fire which, when it was an army forage store in 1865, completed the damage begun by the Revolutionists. Take first the extremely beautiful and interesting west front, which presents, as it were, an epitome of mediæval architecture--the Norman or Romanesque arch, the Gothic beginning and the Flamboyant decadence are all represented. For the lower portion is composed of three round-headed arches, the soffits of which are ornamented with round mouldings and zigzag work, and rest on columns with curious capitals formed of acanthus leaves from which grotesque heads peep out. Above these three round arches are three pointed windows. The transition character of these is emphasised by the mouldings in the soffits being continuations of those in the side piers. The windows rest on a simple cornice, carried by corbels, also grotesque. Above them was a Flamboyant rose, demolished after the fire in 1865.

The church was founded in 1108 by the great Bishop of Chartres, S. Ives, and was at once a collegiate and parochial institution in one of the most populous parishes of Chartres. A massive square tower flanks the south side of the transept; the spire which it once supported was destroyed during the Revolution. At the east end there was a curious feature. An arch was thrown out into the Eure in the thirteenth century, and was made to carry the annexed choir and sanctuary. This portion of the church was rebuilt in the Flamboyant style by Jehan de Beauce in the sixteenth century; and in 1612 a second arch, in continuation of the earlier one, completed the span of the river and connected the church with the right bank. The apsidal chapel built thereon was dedicated to the Holy Virgin. Vauban called the attention of Louis Quatorze to the excellence of these arches, but some picturesque traces only of them can be seen from the riverside to-day, for the arches collapsed and were removed in 1805.

The interior is in the simple Romanesque manner, and, in spite of base uses to which the place is now put, it remains impressive by virtue of the sixteen massive piers which support the nave and aisles, which have been simple always, and remain grand in their ruin.

Two early square crypts under the transepts are worth seeing. For the rest, of what once was, I need only mention the wooden jubé, carved by P. Courtier, on which Jehan de Beauce had also done some work. Among the carvings, it is said, was one which represented a pig churning butter--an epigram in stone against notorious heretics, for Calvin is frequently treated as a pig in this sort of imagery.