Wednesday April 30. Besançon. (11.4 km).

 Oh, I thought I was being clever last night with a lovely supper in my apartment of runny, strong cheese, honied spice bread, green salad and white wine. My stomach thought otherwise and that meant a horrid night and a morning of doing very little. I’m writing this blog several days later, having finally landed in a lovely place with good wifi (surprisingly rare at times!)

I’m going to organize what I saw in Besançon historically. Sorry for sounding didactic, but this exercise helps me figure out what I’m seeing.  

Besançon’s history has a lot of familiar strands.  Paleolithic hunter gatherers came through about 50,000 years ago. Several Neolithic settlements with small farms have been found here and date from about 4,000 BC. By the second century BC, a large Celtic nation, the Séquanes, had established an impressive oppidum in a curve of the river Doubs. It was surrounded by the usual gallic  wall of wood frame, covered with earth and faced with stone. These walls could be up to 4 metres high.  The site was coveted, and attacked by various Germanic groups.

Then in 58 BC up rode Julius Caesar.  His administration made the town a regional capital and everything flourished for a while. But by the mid fourth century, with the falling of the Roman empire, it was described as a ‘miserable village’. From the Roman glory days, a triumphal arch.

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Clovis, King of the Francs, attached the Séquanes, who had survived as a distinct people, to his 6th century realm. Then things bounced around a bit, but in 1290, after fighting hard for the privilege, Besançon became a self-governing city, under the protection of the Dukes of Bourgogne (and therefore of the Holy Roman Emperor).  This lasted for 400 prosperous years.  Here is what medieval Besançon looked like.  You can see that it was walled.  The walls have disappeared, but “le vieux  Besançon” still sits neatly contained in the loop of the river (“le boucle”).  This is a 1629 map of the city with its two patron saints shown at the bottom ( both early martyrs, as their headless state suggests).

One medieval gate remains. It was actually enlarged about the same time as that map was made.

Speeding has always been a problem; see if you can read the inscription carved above the main entrance of this gate!

Yup, “Défense expresse de trotter.”

The sixteenth century was a happy and prosperous one here under the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  A museum has a well-preserved series of seventeenth century tapestries (made in Bruges) telling the history of this Emperor, who spent a lot of time fighting. Here he is capturing Tunis from the Turks in 1534.  He saw himself carrying on the Christian fights of the Crusaders in doing so.

In contrast, the seventeenth century was miserable for the 12,000 inhabitants of Besançon. Wars, sieges of the city, different lords and masters, plague, crop failures, famine.  Finally in 1674 the French under King Louis XIV, le roi soleil, captured the city.  For the French, this was a welcome extension eastwards of their realm, and Louis XIV didn’t hesitate to make his new possession as secure as he could.

He gave the task to Vauban, a truly remarkable man.  Vauban came from a family of lesser nobility and rose quickly through the ranks in the army, being especially skilled in “poliorcétique”, or the art of the siege. He was victorious in an incredible 48 sieges! After writing a book about it, he became the King’s engineer and then led the work to fortify 160 places to form a “ring of iron” around the kingdom of Louis XIV.  One reason so many Western forts look similar is they took inspiration from Vauban’s designs.  The Quebec Citadelle, that Louis XIV ordered built in 1690, is one example, and Louisburg in Nova Scotia another.

Vauban’s work is easily recognizable by his use of star-like shapes and sharp angles. The first  photo is from the smaller fort Griffon, built to defend the part of Besançon that spilled out past the Doubs river.   The second shows one of the inside entrances in the large fort, built on a rocky spot above the city.

The nineteenth century started with a final siege of the city but then attention turned to economic development. Watch and clock-making, beer brewing, textiles and tourism started to characterise the city.  Here is one of the most extravagant of watches, a special order for a Portuguese collector that took seven years to make and that measures 24 different things but still can fit in your pocket.  It held the world record for most complete watch for 85 years.

The city did not sustain much damage in the two world wars, but by the end of the twentieth century many of its industries had collapsed and it is now reliant on the services sector.

A photo from the heights of the fort shows new urban development around the outside of the “boucle”.