It looked, Father Beckett said, "Like a bit of the world when God
had just begun to create life out of chaos."
Poor Peronne! In its glorious days of feudal youth its fortress-castle
was invincible. The walls were so thick that in days before gunpowder no
assaults could hope to break through them. Down in its underground
depths was a dungeon, where trapped enemy princes lay rotting and
starving through weary years, never released save by death, unless
tortured into signing shameful treaties. The very sound of the name,
"Peronne," is an echo of history, as Brian says. Hardly a year-date in
the Middle Ages could be pricked by a pin without touching some
sensational event going on at that time at Peronne. I remember this from
my schooldays; and more clearly still from "Quentin Durward," which I
have promised to read aloud to Mother Beckett. I remember the Scottish
monks who were established at Peronne in the reign of Clovis. I remember
how Charles the Bold of Burgundy (who died outside Nancy's gates)
imprisoned wicked Louis XI in a strong tower of the chateau, one of the
four towers with conical roofs, like extinguishers of giant candles and
kingly reputations! I remember best of all the heroine of Peronne,
Catherine de Poix, "la belle Peronnaise," who broke with her own hand
the standard of Charles's royal flag, in the siege of 1536, threw the
bearer into the fosse, and saved the city.
When Wellington took the fortress in 1814, he did not desecrate or
despoil the place: it was left for the Germans to do that, just a
century later in the progress of civilization! My blood grew hot as I
heard from our two men the story of what the new Vandals had done.
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