[135] “Ponts en Maçonnerie.” [Illustration: CANAL BRIDGE IN VENICE] CHAPTER THE FIFTH ON THE EVOLUTION OF UNFORTIFIED BRIDGES I Brangwyn’s water-colour of the Pont Henri IV at Châtellerault, over the Vienne, represents a bridge built and fortified by an architect of the Renaissance, Charles Androuet du Cerceau. Here is a fact to be remembered, for Androuet du Cerceau was perhaps the latest European bridge-builder who tried to fit his work into a nation’s policy of defence. From his time onward to our own no high road conducted over a river has been made in any respect a military way, safeguarded from the dangers of war, at least as much as possible. If Androuet du Cerceau had been asked to foretell the development of bridge-building, his answer could not have been less militant than the Pont Henri IV; he would have said that bridges, like battleships and fortified places, would continue to oppose the science of military attack, because their safety would be affected by all improvements in the methods and materials employed by armies. His view of life and art, as we see it in his work, has been the view of all thoughtful craftsmen. He believed that the genius of invention, age after age, set up her home in the ablest minds, and passed through an ordered growth, till at last she attained her culmination. As long as improvements could be made in the action of aggressive war, counter improvements could be made in the reaction of defence, for the art of inventing each new weapon would suggest a means by which its utility in war might be thwarted, and perhaps nullified.