In the early Middle Ages, if you traveled from Paris to Rome, once you crossed the Rhône River at Lyon, you were no longer in France, but in French-speaking principalities that were component parts of the Holy Roman Empire. After 1349, the first of these you’d encounter on crossing the river, the Dauphiné, was property of the kings of France—though arguably not fully a part of France, legally, until much later. After about a day’s travel, the next principality you would pass through, Savoy, remained part of the Empire until the end of Ancien Régime, and even beyond, not becoming part of France until 1860. This drive, which I did about four years ago, will circle through these two fascinating formerly independent principalities, and also takes a quick look in at a third principality, the curious micro-state of Dombes that remained legally independent of France well into the 18^th century. I will also pay a visit to one of the most beautiful buildings in Europe, the Abbey of Brou, in the alliteratively named town of Bourg-en-Bresse.

All of these regions had once been part of an ancient kingdom created by the Burgundians, a Germanic tribe who settled the region in the 5^th century. This once encompassed what is now western Switzerland, the Burgundy you’ve heard of, and the Burgundy you haven’t, today’s regions of Dauphiné, Savoy and Provence. These two Burgundies became divided into Transjurane and Cisjurane Burgundy in the 9^th century, the former meaning ‘across the Jura Mountains’ and the latter ‘on this side’ (looking at it from the perspective of Lyon or the lower Rhône Valley, so sometimes called Upper and Lower Burgundy, respectively). Both were at various times blended with the kingdoms of Arles and Provence, which expanded and contracted over the centuries, until disintegrating in the middle of the 11^th century. The Holy Roman Emperor, suzerain of this whole area at the time, granted lands in the former kingdom to local lords as fiefs, Savoy emerging from part of Transjurane Burgundy and its neighbour to the south, Dauphiné evolving from parts of Cisjurane Burgundy. It’s very confusing, and in fact remained confusing for a long time, with the borders ill defined and the rulers of Savoy and Dauphiné continually fighting over them. To add to the confusion, several of the ancient towns in the region remained outside the jurisdiction of either prince, as autonomous territories ruled by bishops, like Geneva, and it is here where this driving tour begins.

I landed at the airport in Geneva and rented a car on the French side (an interesting enclave of car rental desks), then drove along an eerie fenced corridor from the airport to the town of Ferney in France, so as not to have to go through Swiss territory and pay the exorbitant rate to drive through (well, mostly under) the city of Geneva. I went all the way around the bowl in which Geneva sits—with lovely views of the city, the lake and the surrounding mountains—till I arrived at a cheap hotel I’d booked in Archamps. The car park had a sign at the end of it saying ‘Frontière’, so I naturally jumped back and forth across, in and out of Switzerland, without impunity. The next morning I drove the short way over a low pass to the town of Annecy. It’s not a long drive, and it is interesting to come to it from the direction of Geneva, as it can put in mind the distance (physical and mental) between that city and the seat of its Catholic bishops after 1535—the year they were sent away from a now Calvinist city.

Annecy is a beautiful small town, kept small as it is hemmed in by the waters of Lake Annecy and the surrounding mountains. A short river, the Thiou, flows out of the lake and into the river Fier which soon joins the Rhône a few miles to the west. The Thiou bisects the town, also criss-crossed by canals. The streets are lined with shops and restaurants, and the day I was there, absolute hordes of tourists. Picturesque bridges cross the waterways, jammed with those making photos, especially in favour of the town’s most famous landmark, the Palais de l’Isle, a 12^th-century fortified building on an island in the centre of town that has served as Annecy’s prison and courthouse.

I made a quick exit from the town centre and headed up a small hill towards the Château d’Annecy. The oldest part of this complex of buildings, built at various times and in various styles, was the residence of the counts of Geneva—forced to leave the city of Geneva itself by its prince-bishops in the early 13^th century (rather ironically, eh?)—until their extinction in 1394. Their castle and their county (the Genevois) were then sold to the counts of Savoy in 1401. These counts emerged in the mid-11^th century as loyal agents of Imperial power in the strategic valleys leading up to the key Alpine passes between France and Italy. By the 1100s, they owned lands on both sides of Alps: Savoy, Maurienne, Chablais on one side, and Aosta and Torino on the other, in the Italian Piedmont. In the 14^th century, the Savoyard counts expanded their rule southwards, acquiring the county of Nice and thus an outlet to the Mediterranean, and with this addition of Annecy and the Genevois, their power stretched from Lake Geneva to the sea.

The counts of Savoy were based in Chambéry (see below), so they therefore left younger brothers or cousins in charge in Annecy and created the apanage of Genevois (an apanage is a segment of a kingdom or noble territory sectioned off for use by a younger brother, but still remaining part of the family patrimony). First counts, then (from 1564) dukes, these apanagistes rebuilt parts of the Château of Annecy in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, notably in the 1570s when the castle provided a refuge from French court politics for Jacques de Savoie, the Duke of Genevois (aka the Duke of Nemours, his title in France), and his powerful Italian-born wife, Anne d’Este, formerly Duchess of Guise. One of the main wings of the castle today bears the name Nemours and tells their story, with contemporary objects, artworks and furnishing. When the line of dukes of Savoy-Nemours became extinct in 1659, the castle at Annecy fell out of favour, and was used as a barracks for the next centuries until it was turned into the city museum after the Second World War. Today it houses various galleries about history, local artists and the natural world.

I left Annecy after lunch and drove south, skirting the main mountain range of the pre-Alps which towered over the lake to the east—Albertville, for example, is not far, and the land of winter sports and site of the 1992 Winter Olympics. I soon arrived at another lake, Lac du Bourget, and the resort town of Aix-les-Bains. At the southern end of the lake is the city of Chambéry, the capital of the counts of Savoy from the 1280s, improved by them once their status was raised to dukes by Emperor Sigismund in 1416, then mostly abandoned once their court moved across the Alps to Turin in 1563. The court stayed at Chambéry only occasionally after that—sometimes when hosting visiting French royal relatives—or its castle housed unwanted dowagers or abdicated dukes. I parked my car in the centre of town and noticed the castle wasn’t open till later in the afternoon—and it was boiling hot—so I went into the local art museum and discovered with great luck that it currently was hosting an exhibition about the court of Turin as patrons of the arts! A lovely centrepiece was a lovely red baroque wagon for the royal children of the House of Savoy.

Later I went on a guided tour of the castle of Chambéry, which is monumental in scale but a bit of a hodge-podge of architectural styles, including a gorgeous Gothic chapel with a distinctly Jesuit façade slapped onto it. One detail you can see all over buildings such as this is the ‘Savoy Knot’, a symbol of the dynasty also used as an emblem for their chivalric Order of the Annunciation, founded in 1362 by Count Amadeus VI.

This order of knighthood became a royal order after 1713 when the dukes of Savoy were promoted to kings of Sardinia (and later the royal house of Italy). One of these kings, Victor Amadeus III, returned to Chambéry and tried to make it look more appropriately regal by adding a new wing, which today is the seat of the government of the Département de Savoie. After 1860, Savoy was ceded to France, and rather than being the second city of a trans-Alpine monarchy, Chambéry settled into life as a quiet provincial town. I enjoyed a meal that included some regional specialisms like the of tartiflette, made from potatoes, bacon (lardons), onions, and local reblochon—the famously stinky Savoyard cheese. My stay overnight here was not very memorable…but the real star of the show was revealed the next day!

I got up early as I knew I had a lot of driving to do. Heading back north, this time I went to the west of the lake and turned off the main road onto a tiny mountain road. For the next hour I climbed and climbed, twisted and turned round sharp hairpins, then rapidly descended back down to the edge of the lake.

Here on the lake’s edge was the Abbey of Hautecombe, founded for the Cistercian Order by Count Amadeus III of Savoy in the early 12^th century, and resting place of counts and dukes of his dynasty ever since. A place of real beauty in the most wonderful location on this lake surrounded by steep mountains, it had fallen into disrepair during the French occupation of the 1790s, but was rebuilt by King Charles Felix of Sardinia in the 1820s, and his tomb forms one of the Abbey’s centrepieces. The most recent royal burials were of former King Umberto II of Italy in 1983, and his wife Queen Marie José at his side in 2001. Since the 1990s, the Abbey has been owned and run by an ecumenical Catholic regeneration group known as Le Chemin Neuf. Imagine my surprise when I listened to the English audio guide and immediately recognised the voice of an old friend who had lived in this community a few years before!

Luckily the road back out of Hautecombe was less harrowing, and I drove around rather than over the ridge of the Mont du Chat then joined the road that accompanies the mighty Rhône river as its squeezes through some pretty dramatic gaps in the southernmost Jura mountains (roughly where transjurane and cisjurane were demarcated). I paused for lunch and a bit of a nose round in the town of Belley, which was once the capital of a small province known as Bugey, sold to France by the Duke of Savoy in 1601. Not a large town, it was nevertheless the seat of a bishop, so had its own small cathedral, mostly rebuilt in the 19^th-century neo-gothic style, in front of which I sat and munched my favourite mid-afternoon snack, coffee-flavoured éclair. Now you know what to bring when I host a dinner party.

I continued to follow the road alongside the Rhône—with water still that curious light blue-green colour you see when the river leaves Lake Geneva to start its long journey to the Mediterranean—and crossed the ancient frontier between Savoy and the Dauphiné at the river Guiers. I took a short detour up this river valley to twin towns both named Le Pont-de-Beauvoisin (‘the bridge of good neighbours’). This was the ancient crossing point of the river, where, at certain points in the past, royal brides were exchanged between France and Savoy, for example, Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie, married to the grandson of Louis XIV in 1696. Her wedding turned out not to be the cement for eternal friendship between the two states, and the girl’s father, Duke Victor Amadeus II, changed sides soon after when the next war started. Perhaps not a very good neighbour after all.

From Beauvoisin I left the Rhône valley and entered ‘France’ as it was until 1860, and the province of Dauphiné. I drove a short distance to the town of La Tour du Pin, where I stayed the next night. This town and its château, long since destroyed, was the centre of a large autonomous barony in the Middle Ages. The barons were at times completely independent of the Dauphins or else dominated the region as their most prominent vassals, until they themselves took over as Dauphin in 1282. The main line of the family became extinct only a few generations later, and sold the Dauphiné itself to the King of France in 1349, but various cadet lines continued into the modern era, and include one of the famous memoirists of the Revolutionary period, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin, born Henriette-Lucy Dillon, from a family of Irish Jacobites who had settled in France in the 1690s. This part of the Dauphiné, the Turripinois, took its name from the former barony, and is only one of several distinct regions that formed this territory, another former sovereign principality, like Savoy, that spanned from the Alps to the Rhône valley. Today it is divided into several modern départements, but in the past it was composed of regions, including those in the Rhône valley (Viennois, Valentinois), areas further inland (Diois, Grésivaudan), and fully Alpine territories further to the east (Gapençais, Embrunais, Briançonnais).

From La Tour du Pin, I continued the next day across the high arid plains (known as the ‘Terres Froides’) to the ancient Roman city of Vienne. This city gave its name to its surrounding countryside, the Viennois, and ultimately the full name of the medieval principality, the Dauphiné de Viennois. So what is the Dauphiné? Like Savoy, it was formed from the feudal possessions of one of the counts placed in charge by the Holy Roman Emperor when the Kingdom of Burgundy disintegrated in the 11^th century. Originally titled counts of Albon, their citadel dominates a hill overlooking the Rhône valley a little bit to the south, about halfway between Vienne and Valence (the climb up to the ruins is worthwhile, but not on this trip). One of these at the start of the 12^th century, Guigues, took the additional name ‘Dauphin’—the reasons for this are varied, complicated, and entirely conjectural—possibly, for example, because his mother came from the city of Taranto in southern Italy whose symbol was a dolphin. His successors were called ‘count-dauphin’ or simply ‘dauphin’. They soon shifted their base of operations from the area around Vienne further to the east, to the valley of the Grésivaudan, a much morphed form of ‘the valley of Gratianopolis’, the Roman city that became known as Grenoble. With Grenoble as their capital, the dauphins soon dropped the name ‘de Viennois’, and slowly expanded their control over the lands of Imperial bishops ruling in the deep Alpine valleys: Gap, Embrun, Briançon—as above.

I didn’t visit Grenoble on this trip, but it is certainly worth seeing in its dramatic mountain setting alongside the swift-flowing River Isère, and does complete the story of the Dauphiné, as its capital up until the division of the province into départements during the French Revolution. But today I was in the earlier capital, Vienne. Much remains to see of Roman ‘Vienna’, one of the most important of their outposts in Gaul, formerly the capital of the local Allobroges people. The city is built on several hills that slope down to the Rhône—a major river by this point, much larger than when I last saw it when leaving Savoy. One of the hills supports the ruins of a Roman theatre, and is now crowned by a massive 19^th-century statue of the Virgin; the other dominant hill is topped by the medieval fortress that housed the archbishops of Vienne if politics got touchy in the town.

The archbishops of Vienne were powerful rulers in this region. Vienne has been one of the earliest centres of Christianity in Roman Gaul, and its bishops were elevated to archbishops as early as 450, giving them a claim to the title ‘Primate of the Gauls’, disputed with Lyon. As with most Imperial bishops, they maintained jurisdiction over their town and its surroundings that was quite separate from the rural feudal lords around them, in this case, the count-dauphins. And indeed, when the last dauphin, Humbert II, heavily indebted, sold the Dauphiné to the King of France in 1349, the archbishops of Vienne refused to give up their autonomy, not becoming fully part of France until the middle of the 15^th century. The agreement between Humbert and King Philip VI stipulated that the territory should be ruled by the King’s son and heir, who was thereafter called ‘the Dauphin’, a tradition that persisted for the rest of the history of the French monarchy.

The next day, I drove north, skirting around the very large city of Lyon—itself attached formally to the Kingdom of France only a few years before the Dauphiné—and followed a bit further north the major tributary of the Rhône, the river Saône (they meet in the centre of Lyon).I stopped for lunch in a small town perched high on a hillside overlooking the Saône Valley: Trévoux.This town, with picturesque steep streets, and a crumbling ruined château, was once capital of a small micro-principality known as Les Dombes. In the Middle Ages it was the part of the lands held by the Lords of Beaujolais that were on the far side, that is, the Imperial side, of the river. These lords made the most of this sliver of land not under the jurisdiction of the king of France to exercise sovereign justice and mint their own coins. But it was never worth very much more than that, being a sandy, marshy terrain, a moraine filled with potholes which the locals filled with water to create a ‘pisciculture’, that is, raising fish (and frogs) to sell mostly to the citizens of the nearby big city of Lyon.

In 1400, the lordship of Dombes passed to the House of Bourbon-Montpensier, who continued to rule it as petty princes until the death of the last one, the duchess of Montpensier, better known as La Grande Mademoiselle, whose memoirs tell us of her thrill in visiting this small town where she, a junior member of the royal family, could act truly as a sovereign. As a sign of her grand benevolence—she was always quite the drama queen—she founded a hospital. But late in life she was forced to cede it to Louis XIV’s bastard son, the Duc du Maine. Although Maine spent most of his time at court in Versailles, he too enjoyed flexing his muscle as a sovereign, and constructed a parliament building, and most famously, a printing press, on which books could be printed outside the jurisdiction of the royal censors of France. The most famous series of books, the Dictionnaire de Trévoux, became famous as one of the major outlets for Enlightenment thought, disseminating views that might otherwise have been censored by the Crown. This came to an end in 1762, when Louis XV convinced his cousin, Maine’s son, the Comte d’Eu, to sell it, and the Dombes was finally integrated into the Kingdom of France

To end this drive, I started to head back east, vaguely towards Geneva. But I made one more overnight stop, in Bourg-en-Bresse. Driving diagonally right across the odd landscape of the Dombes, with its thousand small lakes, I arrived in this cute town, now considered part of Burgundy, but once the capital of another small semi-autonomous region, Bresse. Bresse was ruled by the dukes of Savoy from the 1270s, often given as the apanage to their heirs. In 1601, the Duke of Savoy ceded Bresse and Bugey (to the east, see above), to King Henry IV of France. Bourg as a town is nice to visit, with several streets lined with old houses belonging to merchants who thrived here, at an important crossroads between France and Italy. But the real treasure lies just outside the town, the Royal Monastery of Brou.

Brou had been the site of a monastery for many years, but in the early 16^th century was re-founded as a royal necropolis for the House of Savoy by Margaret of Austria, widow of Duke Philibert II. Only Margaret, her husband, and his mother, are buried there—for as we have seen, the House of Savoy shifted its operations across the Alps into the Italian Piedmont in the next generation—but these tombs, and the building in which they are placed, are truly amongst the greatest artistic gems from this period of European history. The building is in stunning white, Flamboyant Gothic mixed with some newer Renaissance classical elements, and with a distinctive coloured glazed tiles, like those on the roof of the family Hospital in Beaune, in Burgundy, or even the cathedrals in Vienna and Budapest, a clear artistic link between the various outposts of the House of Burgundy and its successors, the House of Habsburg. Margaret herself was a link, as daughter of Emperor Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, and successor to the dukes of Burgundy as governor of the Low Countries (she also left behind a wonderful palace in Mechelen, near Brussels). Margaret’s court in the Netherlands was famed as a place of patronage of writers, composers and painters, and she employed the finest craftsmen to construct her tomb here—both she and her husband are depicted twice, above and below, in effigies of marble and alabaster—and she hoped to retire here as abbess, in the tradition of Habsburg royal women. It was not to be however, and her nephew, Emperor Charles V would not let her leave her post as governor in the Low Countries, where she died in 1530.

From Brou I drove east on a twisting road across several low ridges and across the gorges of the River Ain, until I approached the gates of Geneva, at Bellegarde-sur-Valserine. Rather than using the motorway (something I have avoided this entire drive), you approach the Swiss border through a really dramatic gap in the Jura mountains, the Défilé de l’Ecluse, where the Rhône pushes its way through the mountains. I was still a bit early for my evening flight, so for one last oddity, I visited the small hillside town of Gex, once the capital of the smallest province of France, the Gexois, which was, like Bresse and Bugey, ceded to France by the duke of Savoy in 1601.  There’s not a lot to see here—a supermarket where Genevans shop because the prices are much lower in France; and the heraldic oddity of a coat-of-arms that reflects that once upon a time, a long time ago, the barony of Gex was held by the lords of Joinville in far-off Champagne—so I headed towards the airport, noting that the next time I visited here I should tour the facilities of CERN, the nuclear research centre, and visit the château of Ferney, once home to the philosopher and playwright Voltaire. Border zones between kingdoms and empires are fascinating places to explore, zones of influence of different cuisines and artistic styles, good places to bring together international minds for scientific collaboration, and also good places to hide from the censors of 18^th-century French theatre!

(images my own or from Wikimedia Commons)

Driving tours in France often include visits to the country’s periphery, the seacoast, the Alps, the Pyrenees. This long circular drive I did in the summer of 2000, to allow me to dig in to some regional archives for my dissertation about the Lorraine-Guise family, instead took me deep into France’s interior. Aside from exploring territories and residences associated with the Guise, this trip also included stop-offs connected to other dukes like Sully, Aubigny and Joyeuse (and briefly noting castles of ducal families Bellegarde, Polignac and Ventadour), as well as visits to two of the most spectacular abbeys in France, Saint-Benoît and La Chaise-Dieu. It was one of my first super road-trips in Europe, and as before, I’m pleased I still have the old atlas in which I traced the journey.

Being a poor student at the end of a year abroad, I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to afford renting a car to enable me to get to the various archives in some of the more isolated departments of France, notably the Ardèche and the Gers in the deep southern interior. I have, I must admit, often been fortunate to meet the right people at the right time, and during the previous winter one of my Parisian friends had introduced me to her mother who was passionate about French history, fascinated by the fact that this crazy American was just as obsessed by her country’s history, and happened to have a car which she rarely used. A bit stunned by her generosity, I nevertheless leapt at the chance, and took off early one morning in June. I headed out of the city via the Porte d’Italie—this was indeed once the route to Italy, National road 7, and I wanted to stick to non-motorway driving as much as I could, a much better way to see a country. This road follows the Seine upriver, through the Forest of Fontainebleau and the town of Nemours onto a flat plain known as the Gâtinais. At Montargis, I paused to look at a ruined château that once belonged to Philippe d’Orléans, brother of Louis XIV, though its restoration projects had not yet begun, so there wasn’t much to see. I turned off the main road and headed west, passed through the town of Bellegarde (with a historic château, at different times property of the dukes of Bellegarde and dukes of Antin), and reached the Loire near my first destination: the Abbey of St-Benoît-sur-Loire.

St-Benoît was once one of the richest abbeys in France, and one of the oldest, originally built in the 7^th century to house the bones of Saint Benedict (Benoît in French), and rebuilt in the 11^th century, famous especially for its distinctive porch. Also known as Fleury, it is monumental in scale, and at its height housed over a hundred monks and a large library. It was one of the great centres of learning of the High Middle Ages, and parent to numerous priories all over western Europe. From the 16^th century onwards, the abbey was held, as many were, in commendam, which means in the trust of a great churchman or secular noble who looked after the abbey’s welfare (and enjoyed its significant revenues), but had little to do with its day-to-day running. One of these in the later 17^th century was Philippe, Chevalier de Lorraine, one of the subjects of my research. The disinclination towards religion by this Versailles courtier, lover of the King’s brother, was offensive to many, as indeed was the entire commendam system of benefice holding, and was one of the more corrupt practices of the Catholic Church that reformers desired to abolish. At the Revolution, the monks were chased away entirely, its famous library dispersed. It took some time to re-establish a Benedictine community here, but since World War II it has once again become a flourishing abbey.

After lunch I drove just across the river Loire and visited one of France’s finest medieval châteaux: Sully. The current building was constructed mostly in the 14^th century, with some modifications in the 17^th. The medieval lords of Sully controlled the crossing point of the river and much of this region of the Loire as it transitions from the uplands of central France into the wide Loire valley, the more well-known part of the river, home to Blois, Chambord, Amboise, etc. The original Sully castle passed to the family La Trémoïlle in the 14^th century, who rebuilt it in its present form, then sold it in 1602 to Maximilien de Béthune, premier minister of King Henry IV and one of the builders of the modern French state. The barony of Sully was erected into a duchy for him, in 1606, and he set about converting it into a worthy ducal seat, especially after he was pushed out of government by the Regent Maria de Medici after 1611. The château stayed in the family for the next 300 years, until it was sold to the local council in the 1960s.

I stayed overnight in Sully-sur-Loire, then spent the next day crossing the wide plain of the Sancerrois on surely one of the straightest roads I have ever been on—probably built by those single-minded Romans who never let a simple hill get in their way.

This road passes through the town of Aubigny-sur-Nère, of interest to lovers of Scottish history and the Auld Alliance, as belonging to a branch of the Stuarts since the early 15^th century, and given by Charles II to his French mistress, Louise de Kéroualle, then raised into a duchy for her by Louis XIV, and held by her descendants the Dukes of Richmond until the Revolution. They still use the title Duc d’Aubigny today, but the ‘Château des Stuarts’ belongs to the community and serves as the town hall. It was built in its present form by Robert Stuart d’Aubigny, Marshal of France, in the early 16^th century. There’s not a lot to see as a tourist, but there is a small museum dedicated to the history of the Auld Alliance that connected France and Scotland for centuries.

In the afternoon, I carried on due south, through the town of Bourges, capital of the province of Berry, and then on to another completely straight road until I joined the Cher river valley and the terrain became more hilly. Driving across some hillside passes and through the deep gorges of the river Sioule, I arrived in the Auvergne, the heart of what’s known as the Midi, and found, quite late, an overnight stay in the town of Riom near Clermont-Ferrand. How I managed finding accommodation on the fly before having the internet on my phone amazes me now, and I sometimes left it until dinnertime to start looking for hotels with signs that read vacancy. Watching the sunset was a real treat as it went down behind the ancient volcanic peaks of the Auvergne—my hotel was quite close to the town of Volvic in fact, and the well-known logo of the mineral water from there displays the iconic peaks.

In the morning I headed east for a short way, before turning south once more, on another very straight road, this time straight through some hills—very determined people were these Roman road builders!—and listening to one of the CDs I had brought along, of Dawn Upshaw singing the ‘Songs of the Auvergne’ by Joseph Canteloube, a set of local folksongs arranged for soprano in the late 1920s. This is lushly orchestrated, evocative music, sung in the local Auvergnat dialect, with fun titles such as ‘La pastrouletta e lou chibalié’ (the shepherdess and the chevalier), ‘Quan z’eyro petitoune’ (when I was small), and ‘Tè, l’co tè’ (go away doggie).

The Auvergne has an interesting history derived from its isolation and rugged terrain. It was one of the last strongholds of the Gauls against the Romans, its local tribe the Arverni being led by the famous Vercingetorix, defeating Caesar here in 52 BCE before being crushed a few months later at Alesia. This was later a place of refuge for Huguenots, for the disgraced ‘Reine Margot’, and even the French Vichy government during the Second World War. I enjoyed driving along this fairly isolated road early in the morning, and as the road continued ever southward, I eventually reached a major watershed, and another huge abbey: La Chaise-Dieu.

The name seems quite appropriate, as ‘the seat of God’, sitting here at the very top of a mountain ridge, with the rugged hills of the Auvergne to the north and Languedoc spreading away to the south, all the way to the sea. The name does not mean that exactly, however, as chaise in this case is a modification of the local Occitan word chasa, or ‘house’. Occitan is the local language of the south of France, its name coined to distinguish the pronunciation of the word for ‘yes’ in the north ‘oui’ from the southern ‘oc’, hence langue d’oc (Languedoc). I heard the language spoken for this first time on this trip as I tuned into one of the local radio stations which broadcast in Occitan.

The Abbey of La Chaise-Dieu was, like St-Benoît, a Benedictine monastery, founded in the 11^th century as part of the Cluniac movement to reform the medieval church. The monumental buildings were constructed in the 14^th century by Clement VI, one of the Avignon popes, who had been a monk here and who suitable buildings for his tomb. Inside is a well-preserved example of a ‘danse-macabre’ from the 15^th century, painted to keep plague away from the faithful. Also put into commende in the 16^th century, the abbots of La Chaise-Dieu were always very high profile courtiers, cardinals and minsters, including both Richelieu and Mazarin, and much later the Cardinal de Rohan who was exiled here after the Affair of the Diamond Necklace which embarrassed Queen Marie-Antoinette in 1785. It was also held for a time by another of my Lorraine princes, Anne-Marie, one of the many sons of the Comte d’Armagnac, a favourite of Louis XIV who was pushing for this son (known as the ‘Abbé d’Armagnac’) to become a cardinal—but he died before this could be accomplished. The monks were driven out here too during the French Revolution, and did not return until towards the end of the 20^th century. Meanwhile, a famous music festival has been held here each summer since the 1960s.

From this mountaintop experience, I drove down into a province known before the Revolution as the Velay, like Auvergne also named for its ancient Gaulish inhabitants, the Vellavi. I arrived mid-morning at its capital, Le Puy-en-Velay, after passing by the château of the dukes of Polignac—at which I did not stop, and have been meaning to return ever since. The Polignacs were one of the most ancient and most prominent noble house in this part of France, though they did not manage to scale the heights and acquire a dukedom until the very final hours of the Ancien Régime, mostly through the intense friendship of the first duchess with Marie-Antoinette (as portrayed vivaciously by Rose Byrne in the 2006 Sophia Coppola film). The castle, still owned by the family, is today mostly a ruin, but incredibly dramatic as I drove past, dominating the landscape atop a rocky outcropping, in fact the plug of an ancient volcano. This area is home to hundreds of these plugs (the remains of volcanic cores that have worn away) known locally as puys, or little mountains (similar to puig in Catalan or poggio in Italian), and the town of Le Puy (also known for its lentils) gets its distinctive look from them—it looks almost otherworldy, with castles and churches perched atop these pointy peaks.

It is hard to believe that the river valley meandering nearby is once again the Loire, so very far from what we normally think of as the Loire Valley—the river in fact originates deep in the mountains of the south, one province over from here, formerly known as the Vivarais, now the department of the Ardèche.

The Vivarais was ultimately my destination for this trip. It was never really a fully fledged province of France, but a sub-province of Languedoc, though, being so far from the provincial capital, Toulouse, and separated by some pretty rugged terrain, it enjoyed quite a bit of autonomy. It had originally been the territory governed by the Bishop of Viviers, which gave it its name, and retained its own local governing body, known as the estates, up to the Revolution. The estates included representatives of the towns, the local clergy, and of course the local nobility, and it was these nobles that fascinated me, as they had a system of rotating membership drawn from the barons of the Vivarais. Twelve of these barons took turns in rotation acting as hosts for the annual meeting in their château, a position of honour and an expression of their local authority. In the later 17^th century, the Lorraine-Guise family held three of these rotating baronies. As my research was developing, I thought it pretty extraordinary that such a small region so far from either the court at Versailles or the normal Guise power bases in Champagne or Normandy could draw their attention, so I came here to poke around in the archives, held in the town of Privas, the capital of the Department of Ardèche, as the Vivarais was renamed during the Revolution for the river that drains most of the area, flowing down from the rocky hills known as the Cévennes through narrow gorges into the Rhône River and from there down to the Mediterranean.

As I drove across these ridges into the Ardèche I could immediately sense I was in a different ecosystem—a lot more pine trees, much less undergrowth, a brighter, more yellow light, and certainly a different smell. I return to the south of France most every year now, and always immediately know I have arrived from this smell: a mix of pine, lavender and the sea. As the afternoon progressed, I drove down along a road high above the deep Ardèche river valley and passed by the castle of Montlaur, one of the places I was here to study, as it was one of the baronies owned by the Guise. The 12^th-century castle, already a ruin by the 18^th century, is still inspiring, perched on top of a ridge dominating its surroundings.

The Montlaur family controlled this valley for centuries, before they died out and passed their extensive properties to the princes of Harcourt, a branch of the Guise family. This road also passes by the equally impressive ruins of the château de Ventadour, though the main castle (with the same name) of this ducal family is further away in the Limousin. I arrived late in the day in Privas, set myself up in a hotel—thank goodness my French was getting pretty good by this point, since English was not a working language in these parts—and got ready for a week in the archives. The town is small and built on many levels which allows for lots of picturesque vistas, restaurants on terraces, and small squares with fountains. The town also has loads of shops selling the local specialty, crème de marrons, made from chestnuts. I highly recommend it. Yum.

With Privas as a base, I took several short (and one very long) driving trips in the afternoons or long evenings (one of the pleasures of travelling in mid-June) after working in the mornings in the archives. One day I drove to the nearby town of Aubenas, a bit larger than Privas, and dominated by a large castle in the centre of town, which also passed from the Montlaur family to the Harcourts. It too originated in the 11^th or 12^th century, but was mostly built in the 14^th century—unlike the others, it is not a ruin, and you can still see how it has been modified in multiple styles over the centuries, from the medieval round towers, to a Burgundian style coloured tile roof from the Renaissance, to neo-Classical elements added later in the doorframes and windows. Today it is the town hall of Aubenas and houses a collection of portraits, including some of my Harcourt princes and princesses.

From here I took a tiny road that followed the Ardèche river, on which was set the castle of the Vogüé family, down in the valley rather than perched up on a hill. This family of local nobles originally held none of the baronies of the Vivarais, but by the end of the 18^th century, through inheritance or purchase, they acquired four of them, and probably were on the road to becoming a ducal family themselves when the Revolution broke out. They remain in existence and are still a presence in the region, and open their château to tourism.

I then completed that day’s drive by doing a circle, along small roads, taking in the small town of St-Remèze—another of the rotating baronies held by the Harcourts—then down into the gorges of the Ardèche, today an extremely popular holiday destination for adventurous boaters, mostly Dutch.

Another day, I decided I wanted to see the other half of the Montlaur inheritance which lay across the Rhône, in the former province of the Dauphiné. This was a long drive, crossing the huge, broad, very blue-green-grey river at Tournon, then cross-country to the tiny village of Maubec, high up on a plateau above the river Bourbre which flows northwest towards Lyon. This plateau is called the ‘Terres Froides’ and it does seem it would be pretty chilly and quite arid. It’s primarily cattle country, and the dairy and wheat products produced here made the marquisate of Maubec a good acquisition for the Harcourts (in contrast to the dry and rocky unproductive lands back across the Rhône). The remains of the château of Maubec were hard to find, and I had to walk through a playground and people’s yards, dogs barking, just to find barely a wall standing.

It was starting to get late, so I hopped back into the car and down into the valley floor where I got on the motorway and headed south. It was a Sunday evening, and the gate was up as I drove in, so I assumed that maybe you don’t pay tolls on Sundays. I drove for hours and hours, deep into the night, till I left the motorway at Valence only to discover from the attendant in the toll booth that it was my fault (naturally) that the other end of the motorway hadn’t had a barrier from which to take a ticket. How to explain this in broken French to a man at about midnight?  I had to pay a huge sum, a ‘full fare’ since I couldn’t prove where I had entered the motorway. Sheesh.

The next day I had another argument in bad French with the woman (who I remember wore a white vest, what you might call a ‘wife-beater’) at the hotel in Privas. She had promised I could pay with a credit card when I checked in, but then said I couldn’t when I tried to leave. Her answer to my pleas was simply to do the French shrug, lower lip extended, and walk away. I was so angry, and now seriously short of cash (for complicated reasons I won’t bore you with, I had no bank account in France, and cash machines back then wouldn’t let you use a foreign bank card). It was very hot. Before I left the Vivarais, I wanted to stop and see two more of the rotating baronies: firstly, the absolutely cute village of Largentière, which was the barony held by the bishop of Viviers himself, built on several layers, and with tiny alleyways—much of the village centre is inaccessible except on foot, which made it quite pleasant. The second, further along the road, was Joyeuse. This was the seat of an ancient regional noble house with that same name, who rose swiftly to the very heights of the aristocracy in the late 16^th century, as favourites of King Henry III, and were created dukes, in 1581. Their success was brief, however, and only lasted a generation—the lands passed to Henriette-Catherine de Joyeuse who married the Duke of Guise. Her daughter, Marie, was the last of the family, and though I do not think she ever came this far south, she certainly was interested in the town. Although the château is nothing to write home about (odd and blocky), the new church she had built in 1675 is quite lovely. Together, château and church dominate the high part of the town, which, like so many towns across the south of France is built on a hilltop. Marie de Guise’s investment in a new church partly helped me see why her family was so interested in this region—for a long time it had been a haven, due to its rugged isolation, for Huguenots, and Marie was certainly keen to perform her family’s main role in the history of France in stamping out heresy.

That afternoon I set out for a long and a bit arduous cross-country drive, up a long windy river valley deep into the Cévennes, into the next province over from the Vivarais, the Gévaudan, and found a place to stay overnight in its chief town, Mende. Mende was historically the seat of another powerful local bishop, so prevalent across southern France in the absence of a strong monarchical government. That evening I witnessed the oddity of a parade featuring an ‘American style’ marching band, and decided to sample the cuisine I had heard about from French foodies: gésiers, or gizzards. Sliced very thin and served on a salad, my tongue said very nice, but my stomach almost immediately rejected it. This is unheard of for me; I generally like everything. But the meal came back up almost as soon as I returned to my hotel room—from the balcony of which I could still watch the marching band. My lasting memory of Mende is thus, unfortunately, a little weird.

The next morning I continued westward, following the River Lot for a stretch, then crossing over a causse, a high arid plateau, to come to Rodez, the capital of the region that used to be called the Rouergue. Like the Vivarais, this province also had twelve baronies that together administered the region. One of these baronies was Panat, and I headed there for a lunch date on a sunny terrace in an ancient house just below the château (in which the count still lives). It was great to see people socially again, after so many days on the road solo—this was the summer home of an eminent professor of history, Orest Ranum, and his amazing wife, Pat. He had written about 17^th-century France for many decades while at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, but it was actually she I wanted to talk more with, since she had done extensive research on the Guise family, as a musicologist specialising on Marc-Antoine Charpentier, the composer who worked for many years for Marie de Guise. I had sent them some of my writing in advance, and was thrilled then immediately dispirited when Orest praised my work as exceptional, then predicted I would struggle to land an academic job since I had chosen such an unfashionable topic as the French nobility. Pffft!

The afternoon was golden, and I drove south and west, past Albi and into the broad central plain of western Languedoc. I remember it was vividly blanketed in yellow—sunflowers. I drove around the perimeter of Toulouse and stayed overnight in an unmemorable roadside hotel (often on this, and subsequent, trips, I stayed in one of those wonderful French hotels, like Formule Un, that cost almost nothing, and deliver almost nothing in terms of comfort, but are always reliable and clean).

In the morning I headed due west to my next destination, Auch, the capital of the Department of Gers which includes the ancient County of Armagnac, and whose archives I next wanted to peer into. Armagnac is more than just the name of a local brandy, it is also the name of a dynasty that dominated politics in the southwestern corner of France—Gascony—for much of the middle ages. They gave their name to one of the factions that tore the Kingdom apart in the early decades of the 15^th century (and they often allied with the English king against the French king to do so); but by the end of the century, it was they, not the French monarchy that disappeared from the corridors of power, and their lands were redistributed to more loyal French nobles. My interest in the region comes in two centuries later, when the title Count of Armagnac was conferred upon the Count of Harcourt (one of my Lorraine-Guise princes), but all the standard sources indicated that it was merely an honorific title, not having much if anything to do with the old Gascon county itself. So I spent a morning in the archives in Auch—such a different experience to the very modern regional archives I had worked in in Paris, Rouen or the previous week in Privas: these were located in the back room of an old church, and the two ancient curators seemed extremely surprised to see anyone at all, much less an American phd student. Instead of insisting I wear white cotton gloves, they brought tea and even a piece of cake to the desk where I was working. I didn’t find much in the archives here, except that southern French hospitality was very different to what I had experienced in the north, but I did find clear evidence that the Count of Harcourt had very real rights and revenues from his new southern county.

Feeling pleased, I splurged for a nice lunch on a terrace in the centre of town. Gascony is known for its culinary richness, and Auch in particular is known as a real centre of gastronomy. I don’t recall precisely what I ate that day, but all these years later, I can still recall the absolute lusciousness of the rabbit dish. I have been a convert to southern cooking ever since. I got back in the car and headed north through Armagnac country, stopping briefly in the town of Condom, which, not only being a funny name for English-speakers, was also the site of a bishopric held by one of my Lorraine princes (every stop has a purpose). Condom was the site of one of those ancient fortified abbeys repeatedly attacked and pillaged by Vikings and Saracens in the 9^th and 10^th centuries. In the 14^th century the abbot was raised to the status of a bishop by one of the Avignon popes and it remained a powerful Catholic presence in a region often dominated by Huguenots, but it disappeared as a separate diocese during the Revolution.

Continuing north, I passed Agen and Bergerac where I crossed the Dordogne and stopped for my last overnight stay in Périgueux, the capital of the province of Périgord, part of Aquitaine. Driving through this territory, the margins between the coastal plain to the west and the more hilly Massif Central of the Midi to the east you note the presence of numerous castles, logically, since this borderland was fought over for so long between the kings of England and France in the Hundred Years War. This route was also one of the key pilgrimage pathways from northwest Europe towards Santiago in Spain. The next day I continued up this route across the Limousin (and its capital Limoges), then joined the motorway for my final long trek back up to Paris. In a subsequent driving tour I explored more of Aquitaine and the west of France—the subject of a future blog post—but my time for this trip was up. My last stop was a lunch break in Orléans, where I re-crossed the Loire. I went into the centre of town and had a look at the cathedral which dominates one end of its central broad avenue, named for Jeanne d’Arc, whose heroics at the siege of Orléans in April 1429, helped to turn the tide of the Hundred Years War in France’s favour, a fact the tourist stands, t-shirts and snack shops never let you forget.

The final stretch was over the very flat and wheat-filled plain north of Orléans known as the Beauce. The modern N 20 highway follows the path of the ancient route to Paris, that passes between the narrow gap—well-fortified—at Montlhéry, and eventually back up to the Porte d’Orléans, one of the major gateways into the city.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons, my own, or other open source sites)