272

ROUTE TO BRIANÇON.

dilapidation. I was the first of our party to arrive on the summit. While waiting for the diligence, I sat down on a delicious swardy bank, and bathed my feet in a runnel of crystalline water, an operation which drew upon me the severe criticisms of our travelling friends, who considered it highly dangerous.

At length our vehicle came up. The luggage was stowed on the roof, we inside, and off we set down the mountain. To Monestier, fourteen miles from Briançon, the route continued very bad; there we came to the new road, on which we travelled, passing through several populous villages, to our destination. We arrived at Briançon at half-past eight o'clock, having been fifteen hours and a half accomplishing the distance of fifty-four miles from Bourg d'Oysans. It was too dark to see anything of the fortresses, but by the number of drawbridges that we crossed, we were made aware of our entrance into a fortified town. The diligence drove to the Hôtel de la Paix, where we procured two bedrooms, and an olla podrida kind of meal, which, if it was not very choice, possessed at least the merit of being abundant.

THE

CHAPTER XIV.

HE citizens of Briançon must have the enviable faculty possessed by the brazier who went to sleep in a caldron while smiths were riveting the plates close to his hard copper pillow. At the hour of three A.M., I was aroused by a battering of drums, which continued so long and so loud, that I was puzzled exceedingly in conjecturing whether the said drums were beaten by human hands or steam machinery; and I was further puzzled to divine the cause of the infernal tantararara. At first I imagined that an émeute had broken in upon the remote town, but as the drumming continued and roused no echoes but its own, I quickly dismissed that idea. Had it been light I should have got up, but as darkness was yet on our hemisphere, I remained in bed listening and wondering, for sleep I could not. When I did get up, I ascertained that the drumwhacking was to announce to the inhabitants of the surrounding country that the gates of Briançon were about to be opened, and that the same noisy notice is given every morning. I walked round the city before breakfast: this sounds a great undertaking, but it is an affair of some twenty minutes at most, for the place is small, and contains only 3000 inha

bitants. It stands on a steep slope, so steep, indeed, that the street running up and down, which cuts the town in twain, is impassable for carriages. At the upper end it is backed by an isolated rock, and the lower commands the meeting of three valleys. A very high wall girdles it, squeezing the houses together. Many of the buildings are picturesque, and bear dates of the olden time carved on their curious faces.

After breakfast we set out to see the fortresses, but it was necessary to be provided with a pass. Remembering our Grenoble difficulty, we determined to see the commandant, in whom the power lies to grant orders. We were ushered into the presence of this great personage by his secretary. M. le Commandant was a fine specimen of a militaire of the Bonaparte age. His head and mustachios were silvered, and he wore in his button-hole the ribbon of the Legion of Honour.

I made our wishes known to him, adding, however, that we should be perfectly satisfied by being allowed to visit one or two of the forts. This I said, conceiving that leave to see them was conceded charily. But the commandant quickly undeceived me: You shall have an order,' he said, to see them all; but I strongly recommend you not to go to that on Mont Infernet, it cost me two days to climb to it and return.' And he added- I allow every one to see the forts who wishes to do so, even Radetzky himself might go over them if he chose; for it is my firm belief

that the united armies of Europe could not take them.' While his secretary was preparing the pass, the commandant told us that there were four hundred cannon in the forts, and one thousand barrels of gunpowder, each barrel containing fifty kilo

grammes.

When the pass was duly sealed, it received the commandant's signature, and was put into our hands with a low bow on his part, and received by us with grateful acknowledgments.

The fortifications of Briançon are the chiefest military engineering wonders of France, and justly entitle that city to be called the Gibraltar of the country. Placed in a defile communicating with the passage from Italy into France, it was deemed desirable to fortify the eminences commanding it. This has been done by erecting powerful defences on them. There are seven distinct forts; the lowest is 200 feet above the city; the highest, on Mont Infernet, 9350 feet above the sea-level.

The deep defile through which the river Clairée rushes is spanned by a bridge of a single arch, of 138 feet from buttress to buttress, and 172 feet above the water. This bridge leads to the principal forts. An excellent zig-zag road is conducted up the rocky heights, from fort to fort; but independently of this, a communication exists between them by means of subterranean passages.

Our military ardour evaporated long before we had surmounted one thousand feet. We gazed at

Mont Infernet, with its high-seated fort, but had not the courage to ascend to it,-indeed, the task requires a long day. The devices to annihilate life are most ingenious; it would, however, need the education of a military engineer to appreciate them properly. Every point where footing can be found is commanded by cannon, and it seems next to impossible for an army to escape destruction if it attempted to enter Briançon by the Italian road.

The spectacle would indeed be fearfully grand to witness the forts opening their fire on an advancing enemy. In Homeric days, Jupiter himself would be considered throned on Mont Infernet launching his thunderbolts, when the balls came down from the tremendous heights. As at Grenoble, we were allowed free access to the various forts and fortifications, but were disappointed in not being allowed to sketch. With the fortifications we should not have interfered, and it was rather amusing to think that the authorities wielding such gigantic weapons as twenty-four-pounders should fear the power inclosed within the narrow tube of a pencil.

Looking at these fortresses and fortifications, which stretch away broad and high for miles, and remembering that, after all, they form only a small portion of the vast military works which France has judged proper of late years to construct,* we cannot feel

* Although the fortifications of Briançon have been erected for many years, it is only lately that they have been raised to their present efficiency. This has cost three millions of francs.