But I do not think that Androuet du Cerceau realised to the full what competent bridges ought to have been to his generation. He was too mediæval in his attitude to strife, and this defect was perhaps inevitable. You see, the Pont Henri IV was erected between the years 1564 and 1609; and during these forty-five years the spirit of the times was dead against an efficient strategy both in defence and in attack. Soldiers of every rank were passing through a transition, unaided by much enthusiasm. Indeed, new methods were hated rather than liked, because they seemed to be less chivalric, or what the French called less “heroic,” than were the ancient methods, though many of these had grown obsolescent. Alexandre Dumas wrote several delightful books on this period in the evolution of fighting, when gunpowder was a war-god that no brave man was at all eager to worship before an altar of unwieldy firearms. Soldiers liked a battle to be a duel at very close quarters, so they were not amused when they fired through a fog of suffocating smoke, and coughed and sneezed in a chorus, while tears dripped from their eyes. Here and there, of course, while Androuet du Cerceau was engaged upon his bastille bridge, “villainous saltpetre” had some ardent followers. Turn to the military writers of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, for instance, and read the long dispute that went on between the old school and the new. Some experts had a firm belief in the old archery statutes, while others put their trust in ponderous firearms that went off after much coaxing and never carried straight for a hundred yards. [Illustration: PONT HENRI IV OVER THE VIENNE AT CHÂTELLERAULT IN FRANCE BUILT BY CHARLES ANDROUET DU CERCEAU, 1504-1609. TILL 1624 THE TWO GREAT TOWERS WERE UNITED BY A PAVILION FORMING A GATEWAY. ONE OF THE LATEST OF THE BASTILLE BRIDGES]