AQUITAINE.* THIS is a disjointed and rather tantalising, but very
pleasant book. Mr. Flower makes no pretension to literary art ; and indeed he may have thought any special care for style or arrangement unnecessary with regard to a collection of chapters in which history, tradition, legend, and personal experience are all mixed up together. The title of the book seems not entirely appropriate, or at least a little misleading. Certainly the city of Poitiers and province of Poitou formed an important part of the old English Duchy of Aquitaine, brought to Henry II. by his wife Eleanor, daughter and heiress of William the Hermit, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers, confirmed to -the English Crown by the Treaty of Bretigny, and finally lost in the reign of Henry VI. But this book has nothing to do, except in a few pages of preface, with the general history of the Duchy of Aquitaine, that is, of provinces extending from the Pyrenees to the Loire. It is entirely concerned with the ancient city of Poitiers. Mr. Pennell's extremely pretty illustrations are all, with one exception, of Poitiers and its immediate neighbourhood ; churches, abbeys, river, battle- field ; the exception is Le Puy, in Auvergne. Mr. Flower appears to have lived some time at Poitiers, and to have made the fullest acquaintance with all its antiquarian interest. The scenes of history live before him ; the legends and tradi- tions are scarcely less vividly impressed upon him ; and the result is this agreeable and discursive set of papers, one of the charms of which is the good faith and good humour of their author. They are lively chronicles of Poitiers, and nothing but Poitiers. Why, then, should the book bear the large title of Aquitaine?
The known history of Poitiers begins with Caisar's con- quest; but the capital of Poitou, then called Limonum, was not on the same site as the present city. It, however, is of respectable age, having been begun in the reign of Claudius and finished under Nero. The people of Poitou were then in high favour with the Roman Emperors, having helped Cla,udins to suppress a rebellion in Britain, and it was as a reward for this service that they were allowed to build a new city. Parts of that Roman city still exist. About the same time, as old chronicles tell, Saint Martial, a disciple of St. Peter, preached the Gospel in Poitou and Aquitaine ; and the first church at Poitiers, afterwards the cathedral, was founded in memory of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul.
• Aquitaine : a Traveller's Tales. By Wickham Flower. F.S.A. With Illus- trations by Joseph Pennell, reproduced by the Art Reproduction Company. London : Chapman and Han. [63s. net.] Few cities have suffered more sackings and bamings, more changes of rulers, than Poitiers during the first thousand years of its history ; and few cities can excel it in the roll of its Bishops and Saints. Its early history was fall of the wildest contrasts. Mr. Flower gives a sketch of it in his preface, and tells a few of the stories at greater length. It was twice sacked by Franks and Vandals ; it was given by Honorius to the Arian Visigoths, and they again were driven out by Clovis and the Merovingians. There the Saracens were routed with immense slaughter (three hundred thousand, it is said) by Charles Martel, who thus earned his surname. Three times in the ninth century the city was partly devastated by Norman pirates. After that a more peaceful time followed under the Dukes of Aquitaine, who held a splendid Court and encouraged learning. In 1152 the young Duchess Eleanor, the divorced Queen of France, conveyed the country as her dower to Henry of Anjou, King of England, and then Aquitaine passed into a more disturbed period, though there is reason to believe that its inhabitants were better contented under the English rule than afterwards in the more centralised kingdom of France. The English Kings treated the country fairly, and gave the chief posts, commercial and other, to Aquitanians. It was a revolt among the native nobles of Aquitaine, in con- junction with the burghers of Bordeaux, then under French rule, that brought the far-famed Talbot to France in 1452. It was not till his defeat and death at Castillon that the Hundred Years' War finally ended, and all these southern provinces became French in perpetuity.
The first three stories that Mr. Flower tells from the early chronicles are concerned with three great battles fought round old Poitiers in ancient days. Of these the earliest was that of Clovis and the Franks against Alaric and the Visigoths, then ruling in Aquitaine; a holy war, for, the Visigoths being Arians, Clovis considered himself "God's messenger on earth" to drive them out of France. To this belongs the pretty story of the King, encouraged by St. Martin and St. Maixent, still hindered in his advance by finding the river Vienne in flood. There seemed no possible means of crossing it, till "a stag (or rather a hind) of a height extraordinary" came out of the forest and ran without swimming through the water, thus showing Clovis a ford where his whole army was able to cross, on its way to the great victory where Alaric was destroyed with all his power. The next story is that of the enormous slaughter of the Saracens under Abderame by Charles Martel. Then we skip over six hundred years to the battle of Poitiers par excellence, or more correctly, the battle of Maupertuis. Mr. Flower, we are glad to see, does more justice than some modern historians to the heroism, fine soldiering, and noble character of Edward the Black Prince. The description of the battle is excellent, partly taken word for word from the chronicles of the time.
One of the most picturesque of the Poitiers stories is con- nected with the wonderful Church of Notre Dame la Grande, at the time when the city had rebelled against King John; the legend of how the keys of the postern, always kept under the Mayor's pillow, were about to be.stolen by his treacherous clerk in order to let in the English ; but were carried away by the Madonna and kept safe among the draperies of her statue in the church. This church is, without exception, the most curious and beautiful building in Poitiers, if not in France, and the city would be worth a visit from any dis- tance, if only to see such an extraordinary specimen of Romanesque art. The earlier church, burnt down in 1085, is much connected in history with the great St. Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, who succeeded Bishop Aliphius, its founder, and the story of whose life is in itself a romance. But Poitiers was rich in saints. First among them all—at least, in the mind of Poitiers to this day—stands St. Radegonde, the Queen of Clotaire, son of Clovis. The story of her royal and religions life is charmingly told here. Legends apart, she was certainly an excellent and remarkable woman, and one does not despair of the spiritual life of the world as long as the memory of such people is still honoured, even if that honour takes the form of a yearly pilgrimage to their tombs.
It remains to say that the book is beautifully got up, splendid in print and paper, and that Mr. Pennell's drawings are reproduced by photogravures of high merit. It would be well if other ancient cities of France could meet with the same treatment.
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