CHAPTER X
IN THE CÔTE D’OR: BEAUNE, LAROCHEPOT AND ÉPINAC
IN the heart of the Cote d’Or are found first of all the bonnes villes de bons vins of the French, Beaune, Pommard, Nuits, etc. Here is a region which was literally sown with great country houses of wealthy seigneurs; each ancient seigneurie of any importance whatever had its own little fortress or block-house which stood forth as an advance post at some distance from the residence of the overlord. By this means only could the seigneurs command respect for their vineyards. One notes much the same condition of affairs to-day. If there are no forts nor block-houses any more, nor arrows shot from bows, nor melted lead poured down on one from some castle wall, there are at least high stone barriers and big dogs and guardians of all ranks to serve their masters as faithfully as did the serfs and vilains of old. One is glad to say, however, that the Cote d’Or of to-day is not an inhospitable region.
The transformations of later years which have taken place hereabouts have been very considerable, and the historic names one recognizes best to-day are those used by the chateaux de commerce, and found reproduced on the labels on the bottles in the chic restaurants and hotels throughout the world.
One can not, must not, pass these great enterprises by unnoted or with their praises unsung. Their histories are often as interesting as those of the maisons de plaisance of the seigneurs who despised trade and robbed and grafted for a livelihood. Undoubtedly many of them did take the wide road to riches, for the feathering of political nests by the willing or unwilling aid of one’s constituents is no new thing.
The gatherers of the grape under the Burgundians and the Bourbons were not always the happy contented crew that they have so frequently been pictured on canvas. The novelists, the playwrights and the painters have limned the lily a little too strong at times. One judges of this from a chanson which has come down through centuries.
“Allons en vendagne pour gagner cinq sous
Coucher sur la paille, ramasser les poux
Manger du fromage qui pue comme la rage.”
It was said in the good old days that the grape-pickers were wont to eat as much as eight kilos of the grapes a day, to say nothing of drinking three litres of wine, – manifestly they were not so badly off, even at a wage of only five sous for a whole day’s labour.
South from Dijon the itinerary through the core of the Côte d’Or passes in review a succession of names which one usually associates only with a wine list. If one has studied the map of France closely the surprise is not so great, but for many it will come as something unexpected to be able to breakfast at Chambertin, lunch at Nuits, dine at Beaune and sleep at Mersault or Nolay. First off, on leaving the capital of the dukes, almost within sight of its palace towers, one comes to the great wine district of Chénove, and more than all others of this region it is to be revered by the lover of the history and romance of feudal lords. Sheltered, and almost enwrapped by the mountain background, it sits on the edge of the sunny plain where once the Ducs de Bourgogne marshalled their armies and their courtiers.
Not one of the very first wines of the Côte d’Or Chénove comes from the bright particular vineyards or closes of the Burgundian dukes. Their ancient cellars and cuviers are still existent but the wines matured in them are to-day the growth of American roots, planted in the last dozen or twenty years to take the place of those destroyed by the phylloxera, the grafted stocks serving to give that classic body and flavour which have made the Burgundian crus famous. Thus the favourite axiom is proved that it is the soil and not the grape which makes fine wine.
Here at Chénove there is still to be seen the wine vats and presses which served the minions of Philippe-le-Hardi and Charles-le-Téméraire as they pressed their masters’ wines, handling the great fifty foot levers and chanting much as do sailors as they march around the capstan. A block of stone weighing twenty-five tons was alternately raised and lowered with the grapes beneath in great hollowed-out troughs of stone or wood in no far different fashion from the methods of to-day.
Below Chénove is Fixin, glorious in memory because of a striking monument to Napoleon, placed there by one of his fanatical admirers, Commandant Noisat. The Clos de la Perrière, and the Clos du Chapitre, two of the grand wines of the Côte d’Or, also help to give Fixin its fame – how much, who shall say – although this Napoleonic shrine is really a wonder of statuesque sculpture. An alley of pines leads up to a fountain behind whose basin rise stone seats and a rustic shelter destined to protect the effigy of Napoleon, a bronze by the Dijon sculptor, Rude. The whole ensemble is most effective, far more so than the usual plaster, or cast-iron statues of the “Little Corporal” with which France is peopled. To carry the devotion still farther, Monsieur Noisat built the guardian’s house in the form of the Fortress of Saint Helena.
Gevrey is near by, with an old ducal chateau, still well preserved, and supported by an ivy-grown square tower. Gevrey produces one of the most celebrated wines to be found on the lists of the restaurants mondains throughout the world. It is the “Chambertin of Yellow Seal,” coming from the Champs de Bertin, a narrow strip of land sloping down the flank of the hillside to the plain below. Another famous vineyard at Gevrey which festoons itself between the height and the plain is that of Crais-Billon, which takes its name from the celebrated feudal fief of Crébillon.
The Clos Vougeot, the cradle of an equally well known Burgundian wine, is scarce a half dozen kilometres away and may be classed among the historic chateaux of France. Still enclosed with its rampart of whitewashed wall, the great square of vineyard remains to-day as it has been since first developed by the monks of Citeaux.
The property has, it is true, been dismembered and divided among many proprietors, but the two great square pavilions joined together originally gave the Clos that distinctive aspect which, in no small measure, it retains unto this day. Taken as a whole, it still possesses a proud mediæval aspect, though the modern porte-cochère, an iron gate which looks as though it was manufactured yesterday in South Chicago – and perhaps was – somewhat discounts this. Years ago, when the Clos Vougeot was the nucleus of the many Vougeots of to-day, the grapes passed entirely through the wine-presses of the monks, who reserved the product entire to be used as presents to Popes and Princes. Thus Clos Vougeot was the model for all other ambitious, monastic vineyards, and those mediæval monks who excelled all others of their time as wine-growers were the logical inheritors of that Latin genius of antiquity which gave so much attention to the arts of agriculture.
Hard by Vougeot is Romanée-Conti, first celebrated under the ancient régime when the court-physician, Fagon, ordered its wine as a stimulant for the jaded forces of Louis XIV, a circumstance which practically developed a war between the wine growers of Champagne and Burgundy, with a victory for the Côte d’Or, as was proper. To-day we are backsliders, and “champagne” has again become fashionable with kings, emperors and the nouveau riche.
The property known as Romanée-Conti has been thus known since the Revolution, when this princely family of royal blood came into possession thereof. The old abbey is to-day, in part, turned into a beet-sugar factory, its thousand brothers and sisters now giving place to working men and women of the twentieth century, less picturesque and less faithful to their vocation, without doubt.
Moulin-a-Vent was another of the near-by properties of the Citeaux monks, and to-day preserves the great colombier, or pigeon-house, as all may note who travel these parts by road. It is the most conspicuous thing in the landscape for miles around, and looks as much like the tower of a military chateau as it does a dove-cote.
The Forêt Nationale de Citeaux was once the particular domain of the monastery, whose monks preserved and enveloped it with the same degree of devotion which they bestowed upon their vineyards, planting villages here and there, of which the most notably picturesque and unspoiled still alive is that of Saint Nicholas-les-Citeaux, a red-roofed chimney-potted little village in close proximity to the uncouth fragments of the old conventual establishment.
Nuits, not to be confounded with Nuits-sous-Ravières, is more famous for its wine crus than its monuments or its history. Besides a picturesque belfry and hôtel-de-ville, both excellent examples of the local architecture, it has no monuments of remark, although a sort of reflected glamour hangs over it by reason of its proximity to the site of the ancient Chateau de Vergy, when it was the capital of the tiny province belonging to the celebrated Burgundian family of this name.
The metropolis of these parts is Beaune. It has been called a “vieille grande dame qui s’est faite ouvrière et marchande.” And Beaune is, for a fact, all this. But by contrast with its commercialism its mediæval aspect is also well preserved in spite of the fact that its manorial magnificence is much depleted.
The contrastingly modern and mediæval aspect, and to some extent its military character, makes Beaune most interesting. The ramparts themselves have been turned into a series of encircling boulevards, but here and there a fragment of wall is left plunging sheer down to the moat below, which has not yet been filled up. This gives quite a suggestion of the part the old walls once played, an effect heightened the more by three or four massive towers and portals flanking the entrances and exits of the town. This at least gives a reminiscence of what the former city must have been when it was girded in its corselet of stone.
Here and there a sober and dignified maison bourgeoise rears its Renaissance head above a more humble and less appealing structure suggestive of an ancient prosperity as great, perhaps greater, than that which makes possible the comfortable lives of the city’s fourteen thousand souls to-day.
Another civic monument of more than ordinary remark is the watch-tower, or belfry, a remainder of the cities of Flanders, a most unusual architectural accessory to find in these parts, the only other neighbouring example recalled being at Moulins in the Allier.
In spite of all this, Beaune’s historic tale has little of blood and thunder in its make-up; mostly its experiences have been of a peaceful nature, and only because the dukes so frequently took up their residence within its walls was it so admirably defended.
Beaune was originally the seat of the Burgundian Parliament. Henri IV, who was particularly wroth with all things Burgundian, treated the city with great severity after the revolt of Maréchal de Biron, razing its castle, one of the most imposing in the province, to the ground. As a part of the penalty Biron was put to death. On the scaffold he said to his assistants “Va t’en! Va t’en! Ne me touche pas qu’il soit temps.” Five minutes later his head fell into the basket and his king was avenged.
Since this time Beaune has been little heard of save in the arts of peace; there is no city in France more calm to-day, nor “plus bourgeoise” than Beaune, and by the use of the word bourgeoise one does not attempt irony.
The Hospice de Beaune is for all considerations a remarkable edifice; its functions have been many and various and its glories have been great. Formerly the Hospice stood for hospitality; to-day it is either a hospital, or a matter-of-fact business proposition; you may think of it as you like, according to your mood, and how it strikes you.
The Benedictine Abbey de Fécamp, like Dauphiny’s Grande Chartreuse, is but a business enterprise whose stocks and bonds in their inflated values take rank with Calumet and Hecla, Monte Carlo’s Casino, or other speculative projects. The same is true of the wine exploitation of the monks of Citeaux at Clos Vougeot, and of the famous wine cellars of the Hospice de Beaune. We may like to think of the old romantic glamour that hangs over these shrines, but in truth it is but a pale reflected light. This is true from a certain point of view at any rate.
Beaune’s Hospice, with its queer mélange of churchly and heraldic symbols ranged along with its Hispano-Gothic details, is “more a chateau-de-luxe than a poor-house,” said a sixteenth century vagabond traveller who was entertained therein. And, taking our clue from this, we will so consider it. “It is worth being poor all one’s life to finally come to such a refuge as this in which to end one’s days,” said Louis XI.
The foundation of the Hospice dates from 1443, as the date on its carven portal shows. It was started on its philanthropic and useful career by Nicholas Rollin and his wife Guignonne de Salins. It was then accounted, as it is to-day, “a superb foundation endowed with great wealth.”
The desire of the founders was that the occupants should be surrounded with as much of comfort and luxury as a thousand of livres of income for each (a considerable sum for that far-away epoch) should allow.
This fifteenth century Hospice de Beaune is one of the most celebrated examples of the wood-workers’ manner of building of its time. The role that it plays among similar contemporary structures wherever found is supreme. It is only in Flanders that any considerable number of similar architectural details of construction are found.
The general view of the edifice from without hardly does justice to the many architectural excellencies which it possesses. The heurtoir, or door-knocker, in forged iron, still hanging before the portal, is the same that was first hung there in the fifteenth century, and which has responded to countless appeals of wayfarers. The iron work of the interior court is of the same period.
With the inner courtyard the aspect changes. On one side is the Flemish-Gothic, or Hispano-Gothic, structure of old, one of the most ornate and satisfying combinations of wooden gables and pignons and covered galleries one can find above ground to-day. Frankly it is an importation from alien soil, a transplantation from the Low Countries, where the style was first developed during the Spanish occupation in Flanders.
Save for certain modifications in 1646, 1734 and 1784 this portion of the edifice remains much as it was left by the passing of the good old times when knights, and monks as well, were bold. The Grande Salle, where the Chancelier Rollin first instituted the annual wine sale which still holds forth to-day, and the entrance portal were again restored in 1879, but otherwise the aspect is of the time of the birth of the structure.
The Hospice de Beaune is properly enough to be classed among the palaces and chateaux of Burgundy, for its civic functions were many, besides which it was the princely residence of the chancellor of the Burgundian Parliament.
The old Collége de Beaune, now disappeared, or transformed out of all semblance to its former self, was a one-time residence of the Ducs de Bourgogne, and in addition the first seat of the Burgundian Parliament when its sittings were known as the Jours Généraux.
A near neighbour of Beaune is Corton.
“C’est le Chambertin de la Côte de Beaune,” said Monillefert, writing of its wine. Another neighbouring vineyard is that which surrounds the little village of Pernand. Its cru, called Charlemagne, has considerably more than a local reputation. Savigny-sous-Beaune is another place-name which means little unless it be on a wine-card. The little town is set about with sumptuous bourgeoise houses, and a local chateau bears the following inscription over its portal, “Les vins de Savigny sont nourrisants, theologiques et morbifuges.” They have been drunk by countless bon vivants through the ages, and the Ducs de Bourgogne were ever their greatest partisans. Mention of them appears frequently in the accounts written of public and private fêtes; almost as frequently, one may note, as the more celebrated “vin du Hospice.”
South from Beaune is Mersault, a tiny city of the Côte de Beaune. All about its clean-swept streets rise well-kept, pretentious dwellings, many of them the gabled variety so like the mediæval chateaux, though indeed they may date only from the last three-quarters of a century, or since the Revolution.
An old feudal castle – the typical feudal castle of romance – has been restored and remodelled, and now serves as Mersault’s Hôtel de Ville. All about is the smell of wine; barrels of it are on every curb, and running rivers of the lees course through every gutter.
Nolay, a trifle to the west, is scarcely known at all save as the name of a wine, and then it is not seen on every wine list of the popular restaurants. In the good old days it was the seat of a marquisat and was of course endowed with a seigneurial chateau. Nothing of sufficient magnitude, seemingly, exists to-day, and so one does not linger, but turns his attention immediately to the magnificent Chateau de La Rochepot, which virtually dominates the landscape for leagues around.
In contrast with the vast array of chateaux de commerce scattered all through the Côte d’Or – the “Golden Hillside” of the Romans – is the Chateau de La Rochepot, marvellous as to its site and most appealing from all points.
It was at Nolay that was born Lazare Carnot. It is the name of the grand homme who is almost alone Nolay’s sole claim to fame. His ancestor has his statue on the little Place, and his grandson – he who was President of the French Republic – is also glorified by a fine, but rather sentimentally conceived, monument.
Lazare Carnot was born in a humble little cottage of Nolay, and this cottage, after all, is perhaps the town’s most celebrated monument to the glorious name.
The ancient home of the Sires de la Roche, the Chateau de La Rochepot, to-day belongs to Captaine Carnot, the son of the former President, who, thoroughly and consistently, has begun its restoration on model lines.
The Sire de la Roche-Nolay, who planned the work, hired one by the name of Pot, it is said, to dig a well within the courtyard. The price demanded was so high that he was obliged to turn over the property itself in payment. It was by this means, says historic fact or legend, that the line of Pots, big and little, came into possession. This Philippe Pot, by his marriage, brought the property to the Montmorencys and himself to the high office of Counsellor of Anne de Beaujeau. He became seigneur of the lands here in 1428, and was afterwards better known as ambassador of the Duc de Bourgogne at London. His tomb was formerly in the Abbey of Citeaux, but has been transported to the Louvre.
After the Rochepots’ tenure the property came to the Sullys, and in 1629 to the family De Fargis. During the Revolution it was acquired as a part of the biens nationaux of the government, and in 1799 the donjon of the chateau was pulled down, the same which is to-day being rebuilt stone by stone on the same site.
The present noble edifice is after all nothing more than a completion of the admirably planned reconstruction of the fifteenth century; the restoration, or rebuilding, of to-day being but the following out of the plans of the original architect, a procedure which has seldom been attempted or accomplished elsewhere. It was done with the sixteenth century fountain of the Medicis in the Luxembourg Gardens (whose sculptures according to the original designs were only completed in 1839), but this is perhaps the only instance of a great mediæval chateau being thus carried to completion. The restorations of Carcassonne, Saint-Michel and Pierrefonds are in quite another category.
The Chateau La Rochepot was a development of the ancient Chastel-Rocca, which stood on the same site in the twelfth century, and which drew its name originally from its situation.
Épinac, just to the west of La Rochepot, is in the heart of a veritable “black country”; not the “black country” of the Midlands in England, but a more picturesque region, where the soot and grime of coal and its products mingle by turns with the brilliancy of foliage green and gold. In addition to drawing its fame from the mines roundabout, Épinac owes not a little of its distinction to its chateau, and a neighbouring Chateau de Sully which dates from the sixteenth century.
The Chateau de Sully is a magnificent edifice built in 1567 for the Maréchal de Saulx-Tavannes, and is to-day classed by the French government as a “monument historique.” It was built from the plans of Ribbonnier, a celebrated architect of Langres in the sixteenth century, and terminated only in the reign of Henri IV. It is an excellent type of the French Renaissance of the latter half of the sixteenth century. In form it is a vast rectangle with square pavilions, or towers, at each angle set diagonally. Though varied, its architecture is sober to a degree, particularly with respect to the rez-de-chaussée.
The inner court of this admirable chateau is surrounded by an arcaded gallery whose rounded arches are separated by a double colonnette. The gardens are of the “jardin anglais” variety, so affected by the French at the time of the completion of the chateau, and are cut and crossed by many arms of the ornamental water which entirely surrounds the property.
After the tenure of the family of Tavannes, the property passed to those of Rabutin and Montaigu, and, for the last century, has been owned by the MacMahons. There are some fragments lying about which belong to another edifice which dates from the thirteenth century, but not enough to give the stones the distinction of being called even a ruined chateau.
Épinac’s chateau dates from at least two centuries before the Chateau de Sully, and is a resurrection of an old chateau-fort. Two great heavy towers remain to-day as the chief architectural features, beside an extent of main building through whose walls are cut a series of splendid Gothic window frames. Tradition has it that these towers were originally much more lofty, but at the period when barons, whether rightly or wrongly, held their sway over their peers and anyone else who might be around, if the local seigneur was beaten at a tourney, the penalty he paid was to cut the towers of his castle down one-half. This seems a good enough tale to tack to a mediæval castle, as good as a ghost tale, and as satisfactory as if it were a recorded fact of history, instead of mere legend.
Originally these towers of the Chateau d’Épinac were of such an overwhelming height that they could be seen a hundred leagues around – this is local tradition again, and this time it is probably exaggeration. Three hundred miles is a long bird’s-eye view indeed! Anyway a local couplet reads thus, and is seemingly justifiable:
“Démène-toi, tourne toi, vire toi,
Tu ne trouveras pas plus beau que moi.”
Épinac, too, is noted for its bottles, the fat-bellied, ample litres in which ripe old Burgundy is sold. “Dame Jeans” and “flacons” are here made by millions, which is only another way of referring to demijohns and bottles. Of their variety of shapes and sizes one may judge by the song the workers sing as they ply their trade:
“Messieurs, messieurs, laissez nous faire
On vous en donnera de toutes les façons.”
The glass industry of Épinac, if not as old as its chateau, at least dates from the very earliest days of the art.
Retracing one’s steps some forty kilometres to Chalon-sur-Saône one comes midway to Chagny. The railroad guides chiefly make mention of Chagny as a junction where one is awakened at uncomfortable hours in the night to change cars. Some of us who have passed frequently that way can call attention to the fact that Chagny possesses, among other wonders, certain architectural glories which are worthy of consideration by even the hurried twentieth century traveller.
Here is a fine twelfth century Roman tower, a former dependency of some civic establishment, but now serving as the clocher of the church, a svelt but all imposing square broad-based tower of the local manor from which the seigneur of other days, even though he was not a “grand seigneur,” stretched forth his velvet-clad iron hand in mighty benediction over his good men and true.
Besides this there is a monstrosity of a cupola of the modern chateau which is hideous and prominent enough to be remarked from miles around.
Clearly, then, Chagny is much more than a railway junction. No one who stops more than a passing hour here will regret it, although its historic shrines are not many nor beautiful to any high degree.