Chapter IX: Section VII: Poitiers to Angoulême, 67¼ Miles

(108 KILOMETRES)

DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE

Kil. Miles. =Poitiers= to Croutelle =7= 4½ =Croutelle= to Vivonne =12= 7½ =Vivonne= to Couhé-Vérac =16= 10 =Couhé-Vérac= to Ruffec =31= 19¼ =Ruffec= to Mansle =17= 10½ =Mansle= to Tourriers =9= 5½ =Tourriers= to Angoulême =16= 10

NOTES FOR DRIVERS

The road is hilly at first, with descents at =Croutelle= and =Vivonne=.

Level on leaving =Couhé-Vérac=, but hilly near =Ruffec=, and hills of a
low gradient are frequent on the way to =Mansle=, where there is an
easy descent to the Charente. After =Tourriers= the hills are a
little steeper.

PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE

=Poitiers.=--A large town on a flat raised area of rock, and famous
for its beautiful Romanesque churches: (1) Notre Dame-la-Grande,
eleventh and twelfth centuries; (2) Cathedral of St. Pierre,
twelfth century, with Gothic west end and towers, choir-stalls
1235 to 1257, stained glass at each end, twelfth and thirteenth
centuries; (3) St. Hilaire-le-Grand, tenth and eleventh centuries,
on Roman site, has seven naves; (4) St. Porchaire, beautiful
eleventh-century tower; (5) St. Radegonde, chiefly eleventh
century, tomb of St. Radegonde; (6) Church of Montierneuf belonged
to eleventh-century abbey, and has part of choir as old; (7) Temple
of St. John, a baptistery of Early Christian date, built A.D. 320
to 330; Palais de Justice includes the old ducal palace; hall of
Romanesque and Gothic periods; keep, with four towers, fifteenth
century; ramparts of town standing at southern corner, and at the
north are the ruins of the château, twelfth and fourteenth
centuries; megalith called Pierre Levée in the suburb of St.
Saturnin.

=Vivonne.=--A village with a twelfth-century church.

=Couhé-Vérac.=--A large and not very interesting village.

=Chaunay.=--A small village with an interesting twelfth-century
church.

=Ruffec.=--A small town with a few old houses, and a church with a
richly carved Romanesque western façade.

=Mansle.=--A pretty village on the Charente with a twelfth-century
church.

=Tourriers.=--A small village with ruined château, and a church of
the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.

Poitiers is the historic capital of Poitou, a province of France, which, together with all the country between the Loire and the Pyrenees, was declared in the Treaty of Bretigny to belong to England as late as the year 1360, when Normandy had been an integral part of France for more than 150 years. The sovereignty of Edward III. being maintained by force of arms only, it was inevitable that his advancing age and the illness of the Black Prince should foreshadow the early loss of such unwieldy possessions. By 1372, when Bertrand du Guesclin, the Breton hero, had been made Constable of France, the English were rapidly losing their hold. In 1377 both Edward III. and his son were dead, and the whole of the country south of the Loire had returned to its natural rulers.

The situation of Poitiers on an extensive tabular area of rock occupying a bend of the Clain, and defended on the open side by the little River Boivre, is one that made it of immense importance in early times; and yet, unlike Périgueux, the town does not group itself into any romantic outlines from a distance. It is the individual buildings which make the charm of the town, and of these the chief are ecclesiastic. The Romanesque churches of Poitiers are, indeed, a magnet, which makes it difficult to drag oneself away. A few of the main events in the early history of the place may be mentioned before dealing with the architectural relics individually.

_History._--Christianity was brought to Poitiers in the third century, and thoroughly established by St. Hilaire, a champion for Catholicism against Arianism.

732. Abderahman, leader of the Saracens, took the suburbs of
Poitiers, burnt St. Hilaire, but was repulsed by the city. The
Battle of Tours (or Poitiers, as it is called in France) was
followed by the retreat of the Saracens, as described in the
previous chapter. Poitou (with its capital, Poitiers) was joined to
Aquitaine under the Carolingians, and came under the dominion of
England by the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine with Henry II.
Eleanor often resided at Poitiers, and died, at an advanced age, at
the Abbey of Beaulieu, near Loches.

1206. John of England ceded Poitiers to Philippe Auguste at the end
of the three years’ war, in which he lost nearly the whole of the
English possessions in France.

1356. The famous Battle of Poitiers, in which King Jean le Bon was
captured by the Black Prince and sent to London in captivity.

1369-77. Poitou regained by Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of
France.

1429. Jeanne d’Arc sent there by Charles VII. to undergo a solemn
examination, from which she came out victorious.

During the religious wars of the sixteenth century the city was taken, turn by turn, by Catholics and Protestants.

_The Churches of Poitiers._--Among the Romanesque churches Notre Dame-la-Grande makes the greatest impression, owing to its hoary west front, encrusted with the strange carving of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to which the building as a whole belongs. The life of the Virgin is shown in the lowest sculptures, and the other rows of figures represent the Apostles, St. Hilaire and St. Martin. On the right side the figures of two wrestlers appear to be in every way similar to those on the remarkable Norman font at Cowlam, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The gable above has a figure of Christ triumphant. It is interesting to notice that the lower parts of the walls seem to belong to an earlier church, possibly of the eighth or ninth century. The interior is covered with crude painting in herring-bone, zigzag, and striped patterns, giving a strange atmosphere to the church, almost suggesting that one was in Southern Spain.

The Cathedral of St. Pierre was largely built at the expense of Henry II. of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, all the principal work being completed before the death of Henry in 1189. It is therefore a Romanesque building, with the exception of the western façade, with its two low towers, and the north door, which were added in the thirteenth century, and are therefore Gothic. The exterior is disappointing on account of the restoration, which has robbed it of the charms of age. With only one exception--that of Notre Dame de la Roche, near Chevreuse--the choir-stalls are the oldest in France, dating from 1235 to 1257, and the stained glass includes some remarkable windows at the east end, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The most interesting is the one of the Crucifixion, which also shows Henry II. and Eleanor.

St. Hilaire-le-Grand was reconstructed in the tenth and eleventh centuries on the site of a Roman building. During the siege by Coligny in the Huguenot wars the tower was damaged so much that it eventually fell, crushing the façade and the west end of the nave. This nave, which has been restored with one bay less, is the only one in France with triple aisles, and the effect is that of five naves with two aisles, or even of seven naves. On the walls there are paintings attributed to the eleventh or thirteenth centuries, and in the southernmost aisle there is an Early Christian sarcophagus lid of the fourth or sixth century. St. Porchaire has retained its very beautiful tower, built at the end of the eleventh century. The three tiers of arcading, enriched with carved capitals, corbels, and mouldings, leave no surface unadorned. The church is otherwise a poor reconstruction of the sixteenth century, and is only interesting for the sixth-century sarcophagus of St. Porchaire under an altar.

St. Radegonde was founded in the sixth century as a mortuary chapel for the Queen, St. Radegonde, who fled from her fierce husband, Clotaire I., and took the veil in the Abbey of St. Croix, where she died in 587, and has ever afterwards been venerated as patroness of Poitiers, her tomb becoming a place of pilgrimage.

The chapel was made into a collegiate church, and was reconstructed in the eleventh century and consecrated in 1099. There is a beautiful Flamboyant west doorway, with empty niches, and the north and south entrances are of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

On the right of the nave is the Chapelle du Pas de Dieu, having an old tomb, with two statues, showing the apparition of Christ to St. Radegonde, the impression of Christ’s foot being left on a stone between the two figures.

The crypt in the centre of the church contains the tomb of St. Radegonde, an empty sarcophagus of black marble, reposing on a massive table of the twelfth century.

The Church of Montierneuf (= _monastère neuf_) belonged to an eleventh-century abbey. The Romanesque choir was altered in the thirteenth century, with the addition of a central apse, known as ‘La Lanterne.’ It was mutilated during the religious wars, and has since been badly restored, but retains some remarkable eleventh-century work.

The Temple of St. John (or Baptistère St. Jean)--_concierge to be found at Atelier St. Jean-Baptiste, No. 7, Boulevard du Pont-Neuf_--is perhaps the oldest Christian building in France, and is one of the chief relics of Roman Poitiers, having been built between A.D. 320 and 330. It is constructed of brick and stone, has straight-sided arches in the south end (the building is oblong, and faces north and south), and altogether an exceedingly Roman appearance. There is a low twelfth-century tower, and the interior is enriched with paintings of the same period. An interesting collection of Early Christian tombs found near the Pierre Levée, outside the town, is now kept inside the building.

Pierre Levée is the name given to a recumbent monolith resting on three supporting stones, which tilt up one end, two others having disappeared since the seventeenth century. It is a short distance beyond the Pont-Neuf, in the suburb called St. Saturnin, east of the River Clain, and although the stone bears a Gaulish inscription, it is not easy to give its age.

The Palais de Justice includes the ancient palace of the Dukes of Aquitaine and the Counts of Poitiers. The splendid hall, now the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_, has Romanesque and Gothic walls, with a similar wooden ceiling to that in the Palais de Justice at Rouen. The end wall, the work of Jean de Berry (died 1416), has three fireplaces with chimneys outside blocking the windows, which are filled with coloured glass. The keep, called the _Tour Marbergeon_, was built in the fifteenth century by Jean de Berry, and has four towers, ornamented with statues of the Counts of Poitiers.

The Château on the north side of the town was military, and not feudal. Its remains are of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, with two round towers.

At the lofty southern corner of the town, now occupied by the Parc de Blossac, there are remains of the ramparts.

The remains of the Roman amphitheatre were demolished in 1857, but fragments of a Roman aqueduct, called Les Arcs de Parigné, still stand a little to the south of the town.

THE ROAD TO ANGOULÊME

Leaving Poitiers by the Route de Bordeaux, one soon reaches Vivonne, a village on the Clain, where the road goes twice to the right and then to the left, across the little River Vonne. The church passed on the left belongs to the twelfth century, and has a fine Gothic west door, with much weather-worn carving.

A change comes over the country south of Poitiers, for hedges begin to appear, and the trees are less closely trimmed. The curious sight of oxen drawing a plough with a donkey leading is sometimes to be seen.

Couhé-Vérac is a large roadside village with an uninteresting church, and no picturesqueness in its long street except the seventeenth-century market-hall, with an open wooden roof, supported by a row of stone pillars.

The road goes southwards in a straight line to Chaunay, where it bends, but on leaving the village at once resumes its straightness. The twelfth-century church at Chaunay has fine sculpture.

It is interesting to watch the way in which the houses assume a different character as one goes southwards. The roofs become very flat, and one begins to notice vines trained above doors and windows in a thoroughly Italian fashion.

The country is undulating and without distant prospects, plantations and the scattered fruit-trees closing up the views.

On passing from the department of Vienne into Charente, the direction-boards change from blue to green.

RUFFEC

is a town on a tributary of the Charente, with little charm in the street which runs straight through it; but by turning to the left along the _Rue de Valence_, one finds in the _Rue des Petits Bancs_ a church with a Romanesque west front of a most ornate character. The three members of the arch of the doorway are richly sculptured; in the beautiful arcade above there remain seven statues in the twelve niches. They are time-worn and battered, and most of them have lost their heads; but they and the figure above of Christ in a vesica, with worshipping angels on either side, still show the skill of the early sculptor.

Ruffec retains some specimens of its overhanging timber-framed houses, one of them dated 1582, and the town is famed for its patties made of truffles and partridges.

Keeping a southward course, the straight stretches of road bring one to a descent to the Charente, where there is a fine view beyond the river, with the village of Mansle down below on the southern bank. On crossing the river there is a pretty view of white walls with bright green shutters, low-pitched brown roofs, and a twelfth-century church raised above the road, with large empty niches by the western door.

Outside Mansle there is a fork, where one goes to the left. The trees lining the road have their trunks covered with velvety moss, which forms a beautiful contrast to the pale blues, browns, and purply greens of the distant country.

After passing Tourriers, where there are imposing ruins of a château and a church of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, a short run brings Angoulême in sight, with the Touvre joining the Charente in the foreground.