Chapter I: The Province and Its People

Gaul in the time of Cæsar included Normandy in its general scheme, as is shown by the ancient names,--that of the Lexovii, at Lisieux; the Bajocasses, at Bayeux; the Unelli of the Cotentin; the Ambivariti, at Avranches; the Veliscasses of Vexin and Rotomagus (Rouen), and the Caletes of the Pays de Caux.

It was many centuries before all these peoples were welded together under one stable government, the Franks only predominating toward the end of the fifth century, after they had vanquished the Romans at Soissons, in Belgica, in 486.

Normandy formed one of the four ancient provinces of transalpine Gaul known to their founder, Augustus, as Lyonnaise. Since it bordered upon the Manche, or what is otherwise known as the English Channel, the “ancient land of Lyonnese” is known to geologists as forming a fragment of what was one day the mainland of Europe.

In our later day the only attempt at the preservation of this ancient name was in the distribution of the ecclesiastical provinces of France previous to the Revolution, when the archbishop who had his throne at Rouen exercised his rights through all the northern province of the Lyonnaise of Augustus.

Later ancient Gaul became again divided, so far as the present limits of France are concerned, into four great divisions, of which Neustria, a vast triangle between the mouth of the Escaut, the source of the Seine, and Bretagne, which included the whole of Normandy, was one of the most important.

The Neustri Kingdom (_ne-ost-reich_, the kingdom which is not of the east) was further distinguished from the _Ostrasien_ by manners and customs which were climatically influenced to differ from those of the _ost reich_, which were manifestly Germanic.

In 1789 the Assembly reconstructed the map of France--the great rhomboid of France, as the French school geographies put it--into eighty-three departments, when Normandy was dismembered to form the Departments of Calvados, Orne, Manche, Eure, and the Lower Seine.

DÉPARTEMENTS. PRÉFECTURES. SOUS-PRÉFECTURES.

Lower Seine. Rouen. Havre, Yvetot,
Dieppe, Neufchâtel.

Eure. Evreux. Bernay, Pt. Audemer,
Louviers, Les Andelys.

Manche. St. Lô. Cherbourg, Valognes,
Coutances, Avranches,
Mortain.

Orne. Alençon. Domfront, Argentan,
Mortagne.

Calvados. Caen. Vire, Bayeux, Falaise,
Pont l’Évêque,
Lisieux.

Normandy, as a powerful independent state in the middle ages, was greatly helped by its natural advantages.

Its great spread of territory, along the Channel coast between the Bresle and the Couesnon, for a matter of six hundred kilometres, has its shore lined with numerous creeks and valleys and marked by jutting fangs of rock, with here and there a sand-spread shore lying beneath a chalky cliff.

Upper Normandy was the name given to that portion of the province lying to the eastward, and Lower Normandy to that lying to the westward; the dividing line being the Pays d’Auge, lying between the valleys of the Touques and the Dives.

Upper Normandy is a series of plateaus, not unlike Picardy and Artois. The streams run through deep valleys which divide these plateaus into distinct blocks, each with a striking individuality.

To the west is the Pays de Caux, which has for a subdivision a restricted region between the Bresle and Dieppe known as the Petit-Caux.

Dieppe, Havre, and Rouen are the three angles of this elevated plain, which, on its western boundary, is bordered by the Seine, where a great promontory known as the Nez de Tancarville juts out into the river.

To a great extent these plateaus are deprived of water, but the valleys have a super-abundance.

Along the coast of Upper Normandy are the famous seaside resorts of Tréport-Mers, Dieppe, Veules, St. Valery-en-Caux, Petites Dalles, Fécamp, Yport, and Etretat.

In the interior is the curious Pays de Bray, between the valleys of the Ept and the Andelle. This is a part of the ancient Vexin, of which the Isle of France also held a portion as well as Normandy; the old divisions being known as “Vexin Français,” and “Vexin Normand.”

Westward of the Seine is the Plain of St. André, and between the Eure, the Avre, and the Iton is the Campagne du Neubourg.

The Roumois lies between the Eure, the Iton, and the Risle, and the Pays d’Ouche between the Iton and the Charentonne, while the Lieuvin borders on the Risle and the Touques.

The Pays d’Auge, between the Touques and the Dives, is also a fragment cut from the same plateau which lies to the eastward.

Throughout Upper Normandy are innumerable forests, preserved to-day from reservations of a former time and guarded carefully by a solicitous government.

These are principally the forests of Eu, Arques, Bray, Lyons (an enormous tract), Les Andelys, Vernon, Bizy, Louviers, Pont de l’Arche, Londe, Roumare, and Rouvray (opposite Rouen), Jumièges, Trait-St. Wandrille, Beaumont, Ivry, Evreux, and Touques.

In Lower Normandy the topography and configuration change completely. It contains innumerable little streams and rivers, and it is more uniformly elevated than in the east; the plateaus averaging between one and two hundred metres above sea-level.

The Orne and the Vire are the chief waterways among this multitude of rivulets, very few of which, except the two former, are navigable to any extent.

The chief districts here are: The Campagne de Caen, the Pays du Bessin, the Bocage, the Cotentin, and the Collines de La Perche--whence come the Percherons.

The whole region is most delightful, abounding in charming river scenery, valleys, and wooded tracts of oak, beech, and pine.

The coast of these parts is more sombre and austere than that to the eastward, though none the less delightful, the Nez de Jobourg and Cape de la Hague being as unpeopled and as little known to tourists as if they were in Labrador.

For the most part the climate of Normandy is the same as that which prevails throughout the lower Seine valley; in general moderate and without extremes of heat or cold, and yet quite different from the climate of America, which Reclus, the geographer, has apportioned to Brittany.

Frequently, in the valley of the Orne, the early mornings are thick with mist which makes those charming views which artists love; while, in the valley of the Auge, and in Bessin, there is undoubtedly too much rain, as there is in some parts of the Seine valley, while at Les Andelys, thirty miles away, there is a notable absence of it.

Generally speaking, it rains more frequently on the coast than in the interior of Normandy. The Cotentin peninsula possesses the mildest climate of all, favouring that of Brittany to a great extent, owing to the proximity of the Gulf Stream. So mild is it here that myrtle, camellias, and fuchsias grow in the open air, which they do not in other parts of the province, unless well sheltered and cared for.

Properly speaking, France has no northern frontier, though the coast which borders the Strait of Calais and the Channel is quite as vulnerable and open to attack as it has been in times past, and as is the German frontier of Alsace and Lorraine.

The mementos of war along the shores of the English Channel are numerous indeed. From St. Malo to Dieppe, the corsairs frequently attacked. At Dives the fleet of William the Conqueror set sail for the shores of England, and Harfleur was the place of landing of Edward III. of England in 1346. The English occupied Cherbourg for a long period, and in 1415 Henry V. disembarked at Harfleur, near the mouth of the Seine, at the beginning of that campaign which terminated at Agincourt.

At the mouth of the Seine, François I. founded Françoisville, later Havre de Grâce, which for a time was in the hands of the English, and was three times bombarded during the wars of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. St. Malo, Cherbourg, and Dieppe also suffered in the same way.

The dividing of the old historical provinces of France into administrative departments, after the Revolution, was a most ingenious work. The idea was then, and always has been, to foster local pride and love of country, province, and district, and for this reason the nomenclature of the new departments, carved out of the old provinces, was most convenient and suitable.

It could not have been better done, for the names of local, physical, and topographical features, such as rivers, mountains, and plateaus were used to distinguish them.

Thus, whilst he is a Breton, and a Frenchman, the native of the Morbihan may have quite different emotions and sentiments from one of Finistère; and the peasant of the Pays de Caux, known as a Cauchois, is quite a different person from the peasant of the Cotentin.

These political divisions are now as familiarly impressed upon the French mind as were the old names of the provinces, and a son of the Aube or the Eure will fraternize to-day with none of those jealousies which formerly rankled between the Bourguignon and the Norman.

After the division into the old provinces, of which the residents of Normandy and Brittany were as proud as any, came the kneading together after the Revolution of those widely divergent influences which go to make up modern France.

The affairs of the departments--of which the ancient Normandy, as we have seen, made five--are administered by a Préfet appointed by the President on the suggestion of the Minister of the Interior.

Each department is made up of many districts, of which the smallest number is four, if one excepts the poor, rent fragment known as the Territory of Belfort--all that is left of the former Department of the Upper Rhine.

The district, of which there are 362 in France, has its affairs administered by a Sous-Préfet. He is nominated by the President of the Republic and is subordinate to the Préfet of the department.

The district is made up of many cantons, the smallest number being eight. The canton comprehends, usually, many communes, the smallest number being twelve. It forms a group, which, popularly speaking, enjoys a certain form of self-government, under a commissioner, who is, of course, directly responsible to the Sous-Préfet of his district. There are, throughout France, 2,865 cantons.

The commune represents the smallest territorial division recognized in the economic conduct of the French governmental affairs. There are in the neighbourhood of 36,000 in France, and they usually comprise a city or large town, with its surrounding villages, hamlets, isolated dwellings, and farms.

The affairs of the commune are administered by the mayor and common council. In the capitals of the department, district, or canton, the mayor is nominated by the President of the Republic, and in the other communes by the Préfet.

The city of Paris, however, has a special administration of its own.

The ancient province of Normandy, after it had been confiscated and welded to the royal domain of Philippe-Auguste (1204), enjoyed many unique rights; of which the chief was the privilege of its inhabitants to be judged on appeal to their own supreme court, which sat at Rouen.

The peasants of the country-side had always rebelled against royal despotism, for which reason their individuality was most pronounced.

Upper Normandy had Rouen for its capital, and Lower Normandy, Caen. This last city possessed a university and long remained the intellectual centre of the province.

To-day its five departments, the Lower Seine, Eure, Calvados, Orne, and Manche, have their ecclesiastical metropolis and archbishop at Rouen, with suffragans and bishops at Evreux, Bayeux, Sées, and Coutances.

From “The French Drawn by Themselves,” of Bedollière, one learns that “the Normans are the _Anglais_ of France, but in industry only.”

Jal says briefly: “The peasants of Normandy have a great love for the bonnet of cotton.”

Bedollière continues with the statement that “the costume of the Norman women is varied to the infinite, but all, down to the _fille d’auberge_, have the instructive science of _coquetterie_.”

“The Norman will never answer you directly,” says another; “yes and no are difficult replies for him to make to one’s question.”

“The Norman is the Gascon of the north and the Gascon is the Norman of the Midi,” one reads, also.

La Fontaine carried the simile still further, though it is difficult to follow his argument exactly:

“_Les serments des Gascons et des Normands passent peu pour mots d’Evangile._”

A similar vein is the following Norman supplication which some cynical Frenchman has invented or unearthed from a hidden source:

“O Lord, I ask you not to favour me with good things. I merit not that which thou would’st give; but tell me only where they are and I will go and take them.”

The inhabitants of Normandy have unquestionably a strong individuality, “above all,” says a local chronicler, “good sense and good judgment.” The one would seem to include the other, but that is the way it is put.

The Norman is always serious and always practical. Some call him an evil-doer, but he is hardly that. He is, however, exceedingly economical. He deplores exaggeration of all sorts; is seldom or ever gay with that abandon one sees in the Midi or even in Touraine; he adores the sentiments of the old régime, even though it may have been his grandfather who lived under them; and he never ceases to struggle to defend the reputation of his country in all things. To-day he lives in a political hatred of change, something akin to the spirit which feared not Richelieu when provincial liberties were in danger.

“Est ce le loyer attendu
Pour avoir si bien défendu
La couronne des rois de France,
Et pour avoir par tant de fois
Remis et lys en assurance
Contre l’Espagnole et l’Anglais?”

With the Revolution it was much the same. Whatever may have been Norman sympathies, she demanded less of those responsible for the overthrow than any other of the old provinces of France.

All that Normandy stood for in the past, liberty and equal rights, were offered; but the province remained faithful in spirit during the sombre days of the Terror--and to-day the native will emphasize the fact by recalling to your memory the heroism of the young girl of Caen who stabbed Marat.

“The Normans,” it has been said,--by a Parisian, of course,--“are tolerant; the Bretons fanatical;” and in a way this describes the two peoples very well.

Most geographies, and many guide-books and histories, omit all mention of the etymology of place-names. This is greatly to be regretted; from the former and the latter they ought never to be omitted, and they should be included in the guide-books as well.

In a work like the present it is interesting to know something of the early nomenclature of a place whose present name bears at least some resemblance to its former appellation. Not always has such information been included, from lack of space. But it might well be made a part of every work which attempts to purvey topographical or historical information.

Every one knows, or may be supposed to know, that the Breton is from Brittany, and the Gascon from Gascony; but how many among the untravelled can put their finger on that spot on the map of France where live the Cevenoles, the Tricastins, or Cauchois; or, for that matter, can locate with exactness the country of the Comminges, the Caux, or the Cotentin?

With France, more perhaps than any other nation on the globe, names of places have a great romantic and patriotic significance. Little by little geography and history have given circulation to some which perhaps are indissolubly impressed upon the mind; but the foreigner--meaning, of course, those who are not of France--never, until he has delved below the surface, knows a tithe of the meaning of the well-nigh sacred devotion which the native has for these glorious titles which have become so identified with the national and life history of the people of France.

With the Frenchman it is something more than local pride and patriotism. It is the country first, his town or place of birth next, then his present domicile, and, lastly, his own person.

As with the topographical aspect, so with the inhabitants themselves. Great diversity obtains; and, in “these little lands of strangers,” as it has been delicately and suggestively put, the Frenchman of one locality is, except for a general likeness of speech and manner, almost as much of a stranger as the foreigner in race.

The Norman has little or nothing in common with the Provençal; the native of French Flanders still less with the men of the Midi; and those of the north not much of the feeling and spirit which actuates the life of those in the south.

This is, perhaps, unique among modern nations; and, while to-day this diversity does not exist on such lines of stringent demarcation as formerly, the difference is still there in a lesser degree.

Even though all are Frenchmen, they still pride themselves in proudly asserting their right to be called a Norman, a Gascon, a Bourguignon, or a Languedocian; without confounding, at the same time, their love of France, the great mother country.

It is interesting to note that it is perhaps a survival, rather than a modern interpolation, which accounts for most peculiar local customs met with in a journey across the country. Normandy has two neighbours which in former warlike times loved her but little, the Parisian and the Breton. To-day the Parisian no longer fears that Rouen may become the capital of France, but the Breton still feels some of the old rancour of contempt for him he calls the “wicked Norman.” Furthermore, the peoples of the two neighbouring provinces of Normandy and Brittany resemble each other not at all; nor ever will so long as old customs and traditions endure.

Normandy was divided into Upper Normandy and Lower Normandy. There were formerly many separate districts, and are still, for tradition has by no means wholly left these parts.

The country of Caux, between Rouen and Dieppe, which took its name from its first inhabitants, is the chief. The etymology of the word is considerably mixed. Caex, Cauex, and the Celtic Kalet all come to the fore. The earliest inhabitants were known as Caletes, which in later times became Cauchois. To-day one mostly sees the Cauchoises in their quaint cloaks and head-dresses on the quays at Caudebec, or in the markets at Yvetot or Duclair.

A physiological memorandum is found in the fact that the Cauchoises of eighteen years, when they open their mouths, show very bad teeth; which in all other lands is an indication of decrepitude.

Here in Caux, however, it is supposed to come from the abundant indulgence in _cidre_, which, by its corrosive properties, attacks the enamel of the teeth.

France has never been considered a prolific country, but here in this corner of Normandy the contrary seems to be the case. A Rouen daily journal published recently a notice of a matter which was just then attracting the attention of the Society for the Protection of Children. It seems among eight mothers of Yvetot, whom in recent years it had helped, there were forty-nine children. When interviewed, one fond mother made the following statement:

“Yes, monsieur, I have eleven children all brought up by myself and all living. I expect a twelfth! As you see, they are all blonds. Here is my eldest. Eighteen in the month of May. Is it not fine? She works with me in the fields. The three boys work at the forge with their father. There is another an apprentice to a saddle-maker, and there are six at school.”

The society makes a gift of forty francs upon each birth. Surely a patriotic encouragement.

The chief of the separate districts of Lower Normandy is the peninsula of the Cotentin.

The Cotentin was the ancient _pagus Constantinus_. Its capital was Constancia, which by process of evolution readily became Coutances. It is celebrated for its rich pasturage and the fine cattle which it breeds. The inhabitants are known as Cotentins or Cotentines.

“The Cotentin race with regard for all reason is the type _laitier par excellence_,” wrote Arthur Young in 1789, who was mostly taken with the milk-giving qualities of the Cotentin cow, but who was an astute observer of many things, nevertheless.

The Avranchin is another district of Lower Normandy, known anciently as the _pagus Abrincatinus_. Its inhabitants are known as Avranchais. They were further qualified by the sobriquets of Bouiderots and Bouilieux, probably because they were employed for the most part in the salt-works built on the shores of the bay of Avranches, where they boiled the salt water dry of its moisture and recovered the salt from great cauldrons of copper.

There is an old proverb which says: “Let the Auvergnats return to their pastures, the Normans to their fishing, the soldiers to their warfare, and the children to their games.”

Bocage is a separate district in the Departments of the Orne and Calvados. Its capital was Vire. Bocage took its name in a roundabout way from the German word _Busch_, which in Norman French is _bosc_, which comes from _bois_, meaning, in this case, a forest, from which in turn becomes _bosquet_ (sort of arbour), _bûcheron_ (a wood-chopper), and finally _Bocage_.

From a French source one learns that Bocage is the least productive part of all Normandy, and its workmen and peasants, known as Bocains, are the most laborious.

There is a charming little tale of the Bocage, by Anatole France, called “The Curé’s Mignonette,” which tells the story of a dove who came to a curé and brought untold blessings upon his parish. It is but a slight tale, but quite worth looking up for its charming sentiment.

Of the women of this part of Normandy the following remark by Arthur Young, the agriculturist, who wrote a century and a quarter ago, is pertinent. Writing from Caen, he says:

“I could not but remark an uncommon number of pretty women. Is there no antiquarian that deduces English beauty from the mixture of Norman blood?” He was a profound agriculturist, Arthur Young, and he wrote mostly of cabbages, departing occasionally into the realms of kings, but pretty women seem to have pursued him, or he them, for a bit farther on in his delightful “Travels in France,” he says:

“Supped at the Marquis d’Ecougal’s at his château La Frenaye” (Calvados). “If that French marquis cannot show me as good crops of corn and turnips as I would wish, there is a noble one of something else--of beautiful and elegant daughters, the charming copies of agreeable mothers.”

Robert Wace, the Norman poet (1120-80), put the following words into the mouth of William the Conqueror as he lay on his death-bed. They characterize the Norman of those times as faithfully as do the romances of Flaubert and the _contes_ of Maupassant to-day.

“En Normandie è gent moult fière,
Je ne sai gent de tel manière
Normant ne sunt proz saint justise
Foler et plaisier lor convient;
Se reis soz piez toz tems les tient,
E ki bien les defalt et poigne,
D’els parra fare sa besoigne.
Orgueillos sunt Normant é fier
Evantéor é bombancier;
Toz tems les devreit l’en piaisier
Kar mult sunt fort a justisier.”

The _gent moult fière_ of Normandy proved his ancient strength eight hundred years later at Bernay, when three hundred of the National Guard stopped the advance-guard of the Prussian army under General Bredow three leagues from the town. It was a daring thing to have done, since the Prussians were in overwhelming numbers, and the town was mulcted to the tune of a hundred thousand francs for the valour of its citizens, as a contribution of war.

The French coast is ever a source of joy and pride to the Frenchman; and no part in all its twenty-nine hundred kilometres is more frequented by summer dwellers by the sea than the strip along the Channel and the Strait of Calais from Dunkerque to Brest.

Picardy, Normandy, and Brittany all have their partisans; but the shores of Normandy and Brittany are the ideal spots wherein the Frenchman loves to while away a summer’s day.

No country of Europe, unless it be Greece, has its coast-line more deeply serrated than France. Brittany is rocky, Normandy high with its chalk cliffs, and Picardy populous with wind-swept dunes of sand and shingle. Each presents a distinct variety of attractions.

The downs of the north are the real lower country; but all this changes as one comes up with the Norman border. Then come great chalk cliffs, grass-crowned, and at their feet a pebbly strand. Occasionally granite ledges crop out, as they do in Brittany, until one reaches the Bay of Mont St. Michel, where the real Breton coast-line begins.

Cap de la Hève, which shelters Havre on the northeast, is one of those freaks of nature which have a great interest for the geologist and the geographers. It is the same great chalky cliff that we find on the south coast of England, and eastward toward Etretat, where are those wonderfully carved picture-rocks, so loved of painters of a former day.

Here on the northern edge of the ancient district of Caux, the vociferous waves and currents of the British Channel eat up the coast-line at the rate of a couple of metres a year, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another.

These great, chalky cliffs continue westward to the Cotentin peninsula; or would continue did not the Seine estuary rend them in twain with its mighty flow.

At Trouville advantage has been taken of the formation, and a modern roadway built which, in its way, quite rivals the celebrated arch of the Riviera. At present it serves merely the purpose of the gay life of Trouville, and automobiles, omnibuses, and motor-cycles rush around its death-dealing curves and sharp descents, to their great risk, and causing an occasional death.

There is a flaring red danger-board, a guide-post and telephonic communication with a red cross hospital plainly set out in view, but even this does not check the recklessness of the road-users in these parts.

Just beyond Trouville is Dives, from whence departed the fleet of the Conqueror in his descent upon England. To-day, the port is choked by the débris thrown into it by the sea.

Gradually the chalk cliffs give way to sand-dunes or high-rolling greensward, until Granville is reached on the other side of the peninsula.

Throughout all this extent the coast-line is dotted here and there with long stretches of sand and pebbles, which once and again have been turned into popular resorts, where inland France comes to enjoy the sea-breezes.

How many French affect this sort of a holiday it is impossible to say; but they seem to have a decided preference for the northern shore, and are quite as great devotees to the seaside--as it is known to Americans, and watering-places, as the English call it--as those of other nationalities.

Trouville and Deauville, with perhaps Cobourg, are the most brilliant and fashionable of these resorts in Normandy, though there are many others of lesser repute and decidedly quieter.

The western coast of the Cotentin peninsula has for its chief centre the picturesque old and new towns of Granville, which face the great islands of Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark, the Channel Isles of the English, and the _Iles Normandes_ of the French.

This western shore-line of the peninsula marks the boundary between Normandy and Brittany at Pontorson, the gateway to Mont St. Michel; of blessed memory to tourists for its old fortress-abbey--and Madame Poulard’s chickens and omelets.

“The granite isles of La Manche,” as the French geologists call them, comprise the Channel Islands, which belong to Great Britain, and the Iles Chausey, a hideously terrible formation of jagged toothlike rocks which would prove a veritable ocean graveyard, were they but in a line of direct travel. A few miserable fishermen’s huts are the sole habitations on this bleak, wind-swept island; but the picturesque desolation of it all will quite make up for the lack of other features, if one is venturesome enough to make the journey by sailboat from Granville, and is prepared to rough it in the same manner as do the Cotentin fishermen themselves.

The Rocher des Moines and the Roches du Rhinocéros are quaint and gaunt indeed, but one wonders--as usual with regard to such fantastically named topographical features--where the resemblance comes in.

The coast-line of Normandy is generally high, cut once and again into canyon-like valleys, the chief of which are those of the Ault, Bresle, Arques, St. Valery-en-Caux, Fécamp, and Etretat.

Tréport lies at the mouth of the Bresle, and Dieppe at the mouth of the Arques.

To-day the commerce of other days on this coast is threatened. Dieppe has held its own as a fishing port, perhaps, and in a way, so has Tréport; but there is no deep-sea traffic now of any size between Havre and Boulogne, save the cross-channel passenger traffic between Dieppe and New Haven, and the Terre Neuve fisheries of Fécamp.

There have been rumours from time to time of the establishing of a deep-sea canal between Dieppe and Paris, but the project is too visionary for serious consideration, and the great waterway of the Seine is certainly all-sufficient.

From the Cape of the Hève to Cape Barfleur extends the delta of the Seine, or the Bay of Calvados as it is sometimes known,--the vast delta of the Seine.

The Bresle is a lively little river which purls away the seventy kilometres of its length between the hills of Picardy and Normandy, and passes Aumale and Eu, to finish its course in the Channel at Tréport.

The Arques flows gently down fifty kilometres of one of the richest valleys of Normandy, and enters the sea at the busy cross-channel port of Dieppe. Its confluence is made up of the streams of the Varenne, Bethune, and Eaulne. Between the mouth of the Seine and Cape of the Hague is the Touques, which comes down by Lisieux and Pont l’Evêque, for a hundred kilometres, and finishes at Trouville; the Dives, with a waterway of a hundred kilometres also ending on the coast at Dives; the Orne, which comes to the sea at Caen, after 150 kilometres through rich pasture-lands; the Seulles and the Drome, two tiny rivers of Calvados, and the Vire, of 130 kilometres; the Douves; the Taute; the Divette; and the Sée and the Sélune of the Cotentin.

From St. Malo, eastward to the north of the Somme, is a particularly vulnerable coast-line, which, in times past, was frequently attacked by the cross-channel brethren of the Normans. To-day, however, with strong defences at Cherbourg and the forts at Hogue and Havre, and others at Dieppe, there is little likelihood of its being again invaded without warning, though the memories of Gisors (1119), Crécy, (1346), and Agincourt (1415) die hard.

The gateways to the rich Norman country-side are both numerous and ample, however; and it may be depended upon that the distribution of the French army is such that ample protection is afforded to such important entrances as Granville, Caen, the little rivers Dives and Touques, and the galaxy of towns and cities lying above and below the cliffs at the mouth of the Seine, to say nothing of Dieppe and Fécamp, and the cities of the Seine valley itself.