The Emperor Napoleon, the Empress Josephine, the King of Westphalia, and the other members of the Bonaparte dynasty, who from time to time visited Epernay and partook of the hospitality of Jean Remi Moët, showed a healthy appreciation of its vintage. Indeed King Jerome, in giving an order for six thousand bottles _premier cru_, remarked with a strange foresight that he would have taken more, only he was afraid that it would be the Russians after all who would come and drink it. Sure enough the eventful year 1814 witnessed the arrival at Epernay of a host of self-invited guests, all equally appreciative of the merits of Champagne, and gifted with an almost unlimited power of consumption, but entertaining insuperable objections to pay for what they consumed. The Prussians and Russians who came hither in February and March misconducted themselves in a very sad manner, burning and pillaging houses, insulting and maltreating the inhabitants, requisitioning all the wine they could lay hands on, and drinking in a manner recalling the Bacchic exploits of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The mayor, Jean Remi Moët, moved by the state of affairs, offered the invaders the free run of his cellars rather than that they should pillage those of others, doubtless under the idea that the reputation his house would thus acquire abroad would soon enable him to retrieve the temporary loss--a proviso happily and amply realised. Beyond the facts that Epernay has profited, and continues to profit, by the ever-increasing development of the taste for sparkling wine; that Charles X., Louis Philippe, and Napoleon III. have successively favoured it with their presence, and accepted the _vin d'honneur_ offered on such occasions; and that during the war of 1870-1 the town, in common with the rest of the province of Champagne, was occupied by the German invading army, there is nothing more to be said respecting its history. [Illustration: THE RUE DU COMMERCE (FAUBOURG DE LA FOLIE), EPERNAY.] [Illustration: THE PACKING-HALL AT MESSRS. MOËT AND CHANDON'S, EPERNAY.] X. /The Champagne Establishments of Epernay and Pierry./