CHAPTER XIV
THE SWISS BORDER: BUGEY AND BRESSE
“LA BRESSE, le Bugey, le Val-Romey et la Principauté de Dombes” was the high-sounding way in which that hinterland between Burgundy and Savoy was known in old monarchial days. Of a common destiny with the two dukedoms, it was allied first with one and then with the other until the principality was nothing more than a name; independence was a myth, and allegiance, and perhaps something more, was demanded by the rulers of the neighbouring states.
In Roman times these four provinces were allied with the I-Lyonnais, but by the Burgundian conquerors forcibly became allied with the stronger power.
Bresse of itself belonged to the Sires de Bagé and in 1272 became a countship allied with the house of Savoy, which in 1601 ceded it to the king of France.
Local diction perpetuates the following quatrain which well explains the relations of Bresse with the surrounding provinces.
“Pont-de-Veyle et Pont-de-Vaux,
Saint Trivier at Romeno
Sont quat’ villes bien renommo;
Mias viv’ Mâcon pour beir
Et Bourg pour mangi.”
Bresse, more than any other of the subdivisions of mediæval and modern France, is endowed with renown for the sobriety and purity of the life of its people; and family ties are “respectable and respected,” as the saying goes. Above all has this been notably true of the nobility, who were ever looked up to with love and pride by those of lower stations. Among the common people never has one been found to willingly ally himself, or herself, with another family who might have a blot on its escutcheon. The marriage vow and its usages are simple but devout, and in addition to the usual observations the peasant husband grants, as a part of the marriage contract, a black dress to be worn at Toussaint and the Jour des Mortes, and to all family mourning celebrations. If a widow or widower seeks another partner the event is celebrated by a ball – for which the doubly wedded party pays.
The village fêtes of Bresse, still continued in many an out-of-the-way little town, are the usual drinking and dancing festins of the comic opera merry-making variety. They are simple and proper enough exhibitions, and never descend to the freedom of speech and manners that such exhibitions often do in the Midi.
None more than Brillat-Savarin has carried the fame of Bresse abroad. A one-time member of the Cour de Cassation, he perhaps was better known to the world at large as the father of gastronomy in France. His “Psychologie de Gout,” if nothing else, would warrant giving him this title.
Val-Romey – the Vallis Romana of the Emperors – and Bugey had for overlords the Sires de Thoire et Villars. It, too, came in time to the Ducs de Savoie, by gift and by heritage, and also was ceded in 1601 to Henri IV, by virtue of the Treaty of Lyons.
Dombes, principality in little, although at first a part of the kingdom of Burgundy, later fell by favour of circumstances to the Sires of Beaugé and afterwards to the Sire de Beaujeau. Finally it turned its fortunes into the hands of the Bourbons, when Mademoiselle de Montpensier came to rule its destinies. She turned it over to Louis XIV as payment for his authorization for her marriage with Monsieur de Lauzun.
The princess made this sacrifice of love in vain, and Dombes fell to the Duc de Maine, while Lauzun languished in the prison Pignerolo, for the king did not abide by his back-handed favouritism.
On the border between the mediæval dukedom and the principality of Dombes, to-day the Départements of the Saône et Loire and the Ain, is a race apart from other mankind hereabouts. In numerous little villages, notably at Boz and Huchisi, one may still observe the dark Saracen features of the ancients mingled with those of to-day. A monograph has recently appeared which defines these peoples as something quite unlike the other varied races now welded into the citizens of twentieth century France.
Modern vogue, style, fashion, or whatever you may choose to call it, is everywhere fast changing the old picturesque costume into something of the ready-made, big-store order, but to stroll about the highways and byways in these parts and see men in baggy Turkish trousers with their coats and waistcoats tied together by strings or ribbons in place of conventional buttons, is as a whiff of the Orient, or at least a reminder of the long ago.
The women dress in a distinct, but perhaps not otherwise very remarkable, manner, save that an occasional “Turk’s-Head” turban is seen, quite as Oriental as the culotte of the men. A blend of Spain, of Arabia, of Persia and of Turkey could not present a costume more droll than that of the “Chizerots,” as these people are known.
Another petit pays, and one of the most remarkably disposed, politically, of all the old provinces which go to make up modern France, is what is known even to-day as the Pays de Gex. It belonged successively to the house of Joinville, to the Comté de Savoie and to the States of Berne and Geneva. The Duc de Savoie, by the treaty of 1601, ceded it to France, but a strip is still neutral ground for both Switzerland and France, which by common accord allows Geneva full access to the territory in order to establish its communications with Swiss territory on the west and south shores of Lac Leman, particularly to that region beyond Saint-Gingolphe.
The name Gex is evolved from the Latin Gesium, the capital of a kingdom owning but a length of six leagues and a width of about half as much. The Bernese and the Genevois conquered it in turn, and to-day its personality is nil except that one recalls it as the head centre for the trade in Gruyère cheese, the kind which we commonly call Swiss cheese. It is in the Pays de Gex, on the railway line from Gex to Geneva, that one notes the name of Fernay and endeavours to recall for just what it stands. At last it comes to one. Fernay possesses a literary shrine of note that all who pass this way may well remember. The wonder is that one did not recall it with less effort.
The whole town is virtually a monument to Voltaire. It was he who built the town, practically; that is, he furnished the land and the means to erect many of the meaner houses which surround the chateau which he came himself to inhabit, and from which, for a time, the rays of his brilliant wit were shed over the whole literary world of the eighteenth century.
After his flight from Berlin, Voltaire, the Seigneur de Fernay, founded Fernay, within six kilometres of the frontier and Geneva, and sought to attract Swiss watch-makers thither that a similar industry might there be established on French soil. Surely Voltaire was more of a benefactor of his race than he is usually considered.
The Voltaire manor, or chateau, albeit that it is nothing grandly monumental, still exists with furniture and portraits of the time of the satirist. At the entrance to the chateau is a tiny chapel, built also by Voltaire when he was in that particular mood. Over its portal it bears the following words, “Deo Erexit Voltaire MDCCLXI.” Arsène Houssaye called the words an impertinence, and, admitting Voltaire’s genius, one is inclined to assent to the dictum. “My church,” said Voltaire, “is erected to God, the only one throughout Christendom; there are thousands to Saint Jean, to Saint Paul and to all the rest of the calendar, but not another in all the world to God.”
Such a romantically storied region as this might naturally be expected to abound in historic souvenirs and monuments almost without end. To an extent this is true, but such souvenirs and recollections of the past more frequently present themselves than do actual castle walls, be they ruined or well-preserved.
The antique lore of ancient Bresse goes back to Druidical days. Stone axes, Celtic tombs and medals, skeletons wearing bracelets and anklets of iron and copper have been found in great numbers, and from these have been built up a vague history of the earliest times.
Of Roman remains there are still evident many outlines of the camps of the legionaries, innumerable evidences and tracings of old Roman highroads, with here and there fragments of aqueducts, baths and temples. Near Bourg have been discovered various medals of the ancient colony of Massilia, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and one wonders what were the relations of the Ostragoth peoples of Bresse with the Phoceans of Marseilles. History is non-committal.
There are no magnificent monumental remains of Roman times left in these parts save occasional fragments and towers which presumably served for signalling purposes as a part of the fortifications of the Saracens. For any architectural monuments of note one can not with certainty go back to a period earlier than that in which the Burgundian power was at its height, or to the time of Charles-le-Chauve in the ninth century.
The feudal memories of Bresse are chiefly the ruins of the seigneurial chateau at Chateauneuf, the chief-town of the Val-Romey. Built high on the summit of a peak of rock and surrounded by deep-cut fosses, and walls which drop down sheer like the sides of a precipice, this chief feudal residence of the Val-Romey was more a fortress than a delectable domestic establishment, though it served the functions of both, as was frequently the case with the feudal edifice of its class. What it lacked in actual luxury or comfort it made up for in the added protection offered by its sturdy walls. This was notably true of all seigneurial residences which occupied isolated positions in the feudal epoch. Its walls to-day, shorn of any æsthetic beauty which they may once have possessed, and crumbling and moss-grown on every side, still rise a hundred or more feet in air above their rocky foundations, and in many places have a thickness of a dozen or fifteen feet. They built well in those old days, before the era of armoured cement covered with stucco. Modern builders make great claims for their product, but will it last? No man knows, and, from the fact that masonry cannot be built even to-day so as to stand up against shot and shell, one doubts if modern work is really as durable as that of a thousand years ago. The military architecture of feudal France, so often closely allied with that of the civic and domestic varieties, was preëminent in its time.
The religious architecture, the monasteries and churches, of these parts have certainly more ornate reminders of the undeniable opulence of the region than the secular examples still existing.
Connecting Bresse and the Franche Comté is a curious little battery of townlets that have never been mentioned in the guide-books, nor ever will be. A motor flight from Bourg-en-Bresse to Besançon evolved the following: First came a smug little town named briefly Pierre. It possesses a chateau, too, reckoned as one of the really remarkable examples of the style of Burgundian building. It certainly looks all that is claimed for it, though we saw it only in the dim twilight of a May evening. The impression was all-satisfying, and, that being what one really travels for, one should be content.
For a neighbour there was Champdivers, which recalled a memory of Odette de Champdivers, the one time companion of the poor Charles VI. during his latter unhappy days. Truly this was proving for us a most romantic region, a region utterly neglected by the great world of tourists who pick out the big-type names on the map and make up their itineraries accordingly.
On the banks of the Doubs, near the border of Bresse and the Comté, lies Molay, whose seigneur, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, died at the stake in Paris during the playing of the great drama of 1314.
After Molay a succession of dwellings continues to the important frontier town and fortress of Dole, a decayed county-town whose official importance, even, has been absorbed by the fortified city and watch-making metropolis of Besançon. Dole will never be reckoned a city of celebrated art, but regardless of this its fine old Renaissance houses and Parliamentary Palace of other days all follow the architectural scheme which makes the civic and secular edifices of mid-France the most luxurious of their epoch.
Bourg, the capital of Bresse, has ever been one of the most important towns of France lying near the eastern frontier, though indeed as a fortified place the modern French military authorities give it scant value from a strategic point of view. Six great national highways cross and recross the city, and many of the narrow streets of the days of the dukes have lately given way to avenues and boulevards. From this one puts Bourg down as something very modern – which it is, in parts.
Built on the site of the ancient Forum Sebusianorum, the city came in time under the sway of Burgundy, of the Empire of the States of Savoy, and finally definitely allied itself with France in 1601.
Bourg is in the heart of Bresse. Its inhabitants are known as Bressans de Bresse, in contradistinction to those who live on the borders of the old province. “Viv Mâcon pour beir et Bourg pour mangi” – Mâcon for drinking and Bourg for eating – say the Bressans of Bresse, and with good reason.
The Bressan costume is most peculiar, at least so far as that of the women is concerned; the men might be of Normandy or Poitou. Only on a fête day will one see the real costume of the women of Bresse, but on such occasions the mere sight of the triple-decked, steeple-like coiffe – a good replica of an ornamental fountain in miniature – will suggest nothing so much as the costume of a masquerade.
The only palatial domestic or civic edifice notable in Bourg to-day is the Parliament Building of the ancient États de la Bresse. Of the many princely dwellings of the time of the Seigneurs de Bagé, and of the Savoyan princes of the sixteenth century, not a fragment remains, though the records tell of a splendid chateau-fort and an episcopal residence of like luxurious proportions which existed at the time of the union of Bresse with France. This may be the edifice of the États which now shelters the Musée Lorin. The longbeards disagree as to this, but the casual observer will be quite willing to accept the suggestion. The monument is certainly a splendid one, even if its history is vague.
The famous Église de Brou at Bourg is intimately bound with the life of the nobles of mediæval times, as closely indeed as if it had been a secular establishment where lived lords and ladies and their courts. A description of this classic wonder of architectural art can have no extended place here. It must suffice to recall that it was erected by Philibert le Beau in completion of a vow made by his mother Marguerite de Bourbon. Within are the magnificently sculptured tombs of the two royalties and another of Marguerite d’Autriche. The sculpture of these famous tombs has been the subject of more than one monograph, and indeed the whole ornate structure – church, tombs and sculpture – is a never-ceasing source of supply to critics and archæologists.
The Italian style, in the most gracious of its flowering forms, is here united with the flamboyant Flemish school in a profligate profusion. The Église de Brou is one of the greatest marvels of Renaissance architecture in all the world.
North of Bourg, on the road to Louhans, through the heart of the Bresse so dear to gastronomes, are the well conserved remains of the Chateau de Montcony, and those of more ruinous aspect which represent the departed glories of Duretal.
Cuiseaux’ monumental remains are even more scant, and the town itself hardly resembles a town of Burgundy. It is more like a place in Switzerland or the Jura; indeed, to the latter region it once belonged, and only came to be Burgundian when the princes of the house, through some petty quarrel, took it for their own by force, as was the way in those gallant, profligate days.
Cuiseaux does possess, however, a ruined aspect of wall and rampart which suggests that it must have been one of the most admirably defended places of the neighbourhood, judging from an old fifteenth century plan preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Then it was proud of its ramparts which possessed thirty-six protecting towers. To-day but two of these sentinels remain, and it were vainglorious to claim too much for them, particularly since the modern plan of the town makes it look as conventionally dull and uninteresting as an Arab ghourbi in the Atlas, or an adobe village in Arizona.
At Pont-de-Vaux, between Bourg and Louhans, one comes to a trim little town, an outgrowth of the ancient village of Vaux, belonging at one time to the Sires de Baugé, and later to the Duc de Savoie, Charles III, who made it a Comté in 1623. It afterwards grew to the dignity of a Duché, so made by Louis XIII. Much is preserved to-day of the ancient manner of building, and, all in all, it is quite as satisfactory an example of a mediæval town as has been left untouched by the mature hand of progress of these late days.
Nantua is known to the traveller in modern France only as another of those lakeside resorts which are such delightful places of sojourn for those who would avoid for a time the strife of great cities. It is a gem of a town, set in a diadem of beauty which surrounds the tiny lake of the same name, but it has no historic monuments, if we except the tomb of Charles le Chauve in the church. This at least entitles it to a passing comment here, this and the memory of a happy afternoon we passed by the crystal waters of this brilliant lake.
Midway between Bourg and Mâcon is Pont-de-Veyle. This old feudal town was once the particular possession of a brilliant line of seigneurs of France and Savoy, the last, under François I, being the Comte de Furstemburg, who acquired it as a payment for certain levies of Germans that he had furnished the French monarch.
The ancient manor of the Furstemburgs still exists, but it is hardly of a proportion or architectural merit to have distinction. Here, too, are the reconstructed remains of the eighteenth century of a family chateau of the Maréchal de Lesdiguières, whose fortunes were more intimately bound up with Gap and Vizille than with this less accessible property. Like Vizille it has been “put into condition” in recent years, and, while lacking the mossy, romantic air of mediævalism, fulfils most of the demands of the worshipper at historic shrines.
There is still standing here an old city gate dating from the thirteenth century, and this in turn is surmounted by a belfry of the sixteenth. The ensemble suggests that it was once a part of a more noble fortress-chateau. The Maison des Savoyards was probably a princely rest-house when the nobles of its era passed this way. Beyond its name, and the elaborate decorations of its façade, there is nothing else to support the conjecture. Its history, whatever it may have been, is lost in the confusion with which many ancient records are covered to-day.
Turning southwest on the highroad, from Burgundy into Savoy through the heart of Dombes, one soon reaches Châtillon-les-Dombes. As its name indicates, it is a descendant of the town which grew up around an ancient seigneurial residence here of the fourteenth century. Chiefly this is memory only, for the fragmentary débris takes on no distinction to-day beyond that of any other indiscriminate pile of stones and mortar.
Montluel, near-by, is in much the same category. It is famous only for the fact that it was here that Amé VII was presented the Duché de Savoie by Sigismond in 1496, and that in troublous, mediæval days it was the safe haven for many political refugees from Geneva and Florence. Montluel, in Latin Mons Lupelli, was the capital of the fief of Valbonne. The remains existing to-day, and locally called “le chateau,” are those of an edifice which had an existence and a career of sorts in the eleventh century, but which since that date has no recorded history.
To Pont d’Ain and Belley is still on the direct road to Savoy. On the great “route internationale” from Paris to Turin sits the ancient chateau of Pont d’Ain, which owes its name to the old bridge which once spanned the Ain at this point.
On an eminence high above the river is the old chateau built by the Sires de Coligny in 1590, the ancestors of the great admiral. Previously it had been the residence of the rulers of Savoy, and to this luxurious dwelling the princesses of the house invariably came to give birth to the inheritors to the throne. Louise de Savoie, the mother of François Premier, was born here in 1476, and here died Philibert II, Duc de Savoie, in 1504, he whose death gave impetus to the erection of that magnificent mausoleum, the Église de Brou.
Belley, a matter of fifty kilometres further on, is a veritable gateway through which passed the ancient Route de Savoie along which trotted the palfreys and rolled the coaches of Renaissance days.
Lacking entirely mediæval monuments of note, Belley ranks, judging from positive documentary evidence, as one of the most ancient towns of the border province lying between Burgundy and Savoy. Its episcopate dates from the year 412 A.D., and, if its feudal monuments have disappeared, its great episcopal palace of later centuries is certainly entitled to be considered an example of domestic architecture quite as appealing as many a feudal chateau of more warlike aspect.
So strong a centre of the church as Belley was bound to be prominent politically, and its bishops bore as well the title of Princes of the Empire.
Herein has been given an epitome of a round of travel in this forgotten and neglected border country lying between old Burgundy, Switzerland and Savoy. What it lacks in elaborate examples of feudal and Renaissance architecture it makes up for in storied facts of history, which though too extensive to be more than hinted at here are as thrilling and appealing as any chapter of the history of old France. For that reason, and the fact that some acquaintance with these tiny border provinces is necessary for a proper appreciation of the exterior relations of both Burgundy and Savoy, the détour has been made.