BelgiumOmond, George W. T. (George William Thomson)
History
Belgium
Omond, George W. T. (George William Thomson)
Belgium -- Description and travel
Bouillon, with its mountains and woods, and its romantic ruin, being
one of the loveliest spots in the Ardennes, soon became a favourite
place for holiday-makers, and had for many years a peaceful existence
before the storm burst so near it in that eventful year 1870. 'I was
there,' M. Camille Lemonnier says, 'in the midst of the _débâcle_, and,
sick at heart, and in the horror of those days, wrote these words:
"A furious coming and going filled the streets. We found the _Place_
crowded with townspeople, peasants, lancers, prisoners, and wounded
men struggling among the horses' hoofs, the wheels of wagons, and the
feet of the stretcher-bearers. A horrible noise rose in the darkness
of the evening from this tumultuous crowd, who moved aimlessly about,
with staring eyes, lost in agony, and scarcely knowing what they did. A
stupor seemed to weigh on every brain; and all round, looking down on
the seething mass, lights twinkled in the windows of the houses. Behind
the white blinds of one house, the Hôtel de la Poste, at the corner to
the left of the bridge, a restless shadow moved about all night long.
It was the shadow of the last Bonaparte, watching, and a prisoner,
while near him the frantic cries wrung by defeat from the wreckage of
the French army died away in sobs and spasms."'
Next morning Napoleon III., who had spent the night in the Hôtel de la
Poste, left with a guard of Prussian officers, climbed up the road,
through the woods which lie between the valleys of the Semois and the
Lesse, to Libramont, whence he journeyed by train to Wilhelmshoe.
Since then Bouillon has returned to the quiet times which preceded the
Franco-German War; but that student of history must have a very dull
imagination who does not find much to think of in this narrow valley,
on the frontiers of Belgium and France, where the past and the present
meet, the day when Duke Godfrey rode off to plant his standard on the
walls of Jerusalem, and the day when his castle looked down on the
humiliation of the ruler who began his reign by making war about the
Holy Places of Palestine.
INDEX
Abbé de Mouzon, 341, 342, 343, 344
Abbey of the Dunes, 152-156;
of Melrose, 153
Abbey of St. Bavon, 170, 171
Adinkerque, 141, 156
'Adoration of the Immaculate Lamb,' 61, 171
Aigremont, Castle of, 315, 368
Aix-la-Chapelle, churches of, enriched, 284;
Peace of, 354
Albert, Archduke, 336, 337
Albert, Archduke, portrait at Furnes, 112;
at the Battle of the Dunes, 119, 124, 126;
marries the Infanta Isabella, 120;
character of, 12, 122;
wounded, 126
Albert de Cuyck made Bishop of Liége, 289;
grants a charter to Liége, 290, 291, 296, 297
Albert de Louvain, 289
Albert, Prince, at Bruges, 72
Alexander, Emperor of Russia, 233
Allée Verte, 203
Alost, 175
Alpaïde, 281
Alva, 249, 250, 329
Amandus, St., 170
Amsterdam, 250
Anoona, Bishop of, 31
Anderlecht, 196
André, St., village of, 21
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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