Of the military and feudal past there are still vivid memories at Auxonne. The chateau-fort is still there, built in different epochs by Louis XI, Charles VIII and Louis XII, and these works combined to make an edifice seemingly all-resistant, or at least formidable to a high degree. The chateau is still there, in part at least--not much has actually been despoiled, but actually the railway station is more militant in aspect. The stranger coming to Auxonne for the first time--unless he be prepared beforehand--will have grave doubts at first as to which is the chateau and which is the _gare_. The latter has a crenelated cornice, meurtrières pierced in its walls, and the vague appearance of bastions, all of which are also found in the real in the old chateau grimly overlooking the swift-flowing Saône. The enormous flanking towers of the real chateau, in spite of the city having been shorn of its prime military rank, are still kept in condition for the service of long-range guns, for the French are ever in a state of preparedness for the invasion which may never come. The lesson of "71" was well learned. On the great entrance portal of the chateau is blazoned a stone-sculptured hedgehog, the _devise_ of Louis XII, and in opposing niches are two carven angels holding aloft an escutcheon. Another doorway is hardly less impressive, though somewhat vague as to the purport of its ornament, which stands for nothing military or even civic. This introduction to the militant glory of the Auxonne of other days is a ripe indication of the dignity with which the place was one day enhanced. Of a population to-day of something less than five thousand souls, the city shelters nearly three thousand soldiers of all arms. Its warlike aspect can hardly be said to have changed much from what it was of old in spite of the fact that its importance is lower down in the scale. Another warlike reminder is the statue which rises proudly in the Place d'Armes. It is that of the Sous-Lieutenant Bonaparte as he was upon his arrival at Auxonne, a pallid youth just out of the military school of Brienne.