Along France's river of romance: . ilor in the French fleetbore as his proudest title that of Roi de la Republiquede rile dOr. At the end of the bridge, after crossing the littleisland, you come into Saumur by the Place de laBilange. On your left is a theatre built in 1864, appar-ently by an admirer of the Odeon; and behind it is thesixteenth - century Hotel de Ville. But the quaintestpart of the town, the only quarter indeed in whichan idea of the old Huguenot Saumur can be obtained,is away from the quays, and away from the broad roadson the right of the rue dOrleans, the great highway thattr
Along France's river of romance: . ilor in the French fleetbore as his proudest title that of Roi de la Republiquede rile dOr. At the end of the bridge, after crossing the littleisland, you come into Saumur by the Place de laBilange. On your left is a theatre built in 1864, appar-ently by an admirer of the Odeon; and behind it is thesixteenth - century Hotel de Ville. But the quaintestpart of the town, the only quarter indeed in whichan idea of the old Huguenot Saumur can be obtained,is away from the quays, and away from the broad roadson the right of the rue dOrleans, the great highway thattraverses the town. It is to be found in the narrow streetsat the foot of the hill on which the castle stands, and SAUMUR TO ANGERS 269 also round the Romanesque church of Notre-Dame-de-Nantilly, further back. In the seventeenth century,Saumur was a great stronghold of Protestantism, underthe Governorship of Duplessis-Mornay, the famous Pape des Huguenots, and was the seat of a largeProtestant university. After the revocation of the. Saumur Edict of Nantes, however, in 1685, it lost 25,000 of itsinhabitants. This crushing blow may account for itsundue size nowadays, in proportion to its the town did not begin to recover in prosperityfrom this disaster until after the arrival of the corps of Carabiniers du Monsieur, in 1763. For these troops,five years later, a school of horsemanship was founded—origin of the present world-famous Ecole de Cavalerie, 270 THE LOIRE in the large barracks facing the rue Beaurepaire. Thepresence of the big Cavahy school, where officers in themost fashionable French regiments receive their training,has made Saumur one of the places where Societyspends both its time and its money. The roads in theneighbourhood of the school are spacious, and borderedwith comfortable houses, while the incessant passingto and fro of men on horseback and smartly-dressedwomen, gives them great animation. A long, tree-shadedavenue leading to the little
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidalongfrances, bookyear1913
