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But I was obliged to pass through Besancon, a fortified town, and consequently subject to the same inconvenience. I took it into my head to turn about and to go to Salins, under the pretense of going to see M. de Marian, the nephew of M. Dupin, who had an employment at the salt-works, and formerly had given me many invitations to his house.
Meanwhile the king had set his army in motion without disclosing his plan, and the inhabitants of Franche-Comte found themselves attacked without having known that they were to be. Besancon and Salins surrendered at sight of the troops. The king, on arriving, went to Dole, and superintended an affair of counterscarps and some demilunes, whereat there were killed some four or five hundred men.
The first sight of Besançon explains at once why Cæsar was so anxious to forestall Ariovistus by occupying Vesontio, although the hill on which the citadel stands is not so striking as the similar hill at Salins, and the engines of modern warfare would promptly print their telegrams on every stone and man in the place, from the neighbouring heights.
The story of the assembly of the Estates of the two Burgundies is equally interesting as a picture of the clash between sovereign will and popular unreadiness to open the carefully guarded money-boxes. The deputies convened at Salins on July 8th, in the presence of the duke himself.
Charles at that time was thinking but little of Louis and their truce; driven to despair by the disaster at Morat, but more dead set than ever on the struggle, he repaired from Morges to Gex, and from Gex to Salins, and summoned successively, in July and August, at Salins, at Dijon, at Brussels, and at Luxembourg the estates of his various domains, making to all of them an appeal, at the same time supplicatory and imperious, calling upon them for a fresh army with which to recommence the war with the Swiss, and fresh subsidies with which to pay it.
If we take up a specimen, we find the ornamentation done at random, and, in fact, the artist was compelled to this method of working in order to conceal the imperfections of the porcelain. The Nans ware very like the faiencerie of Salins commends itself alike for form and design, and the working potters employed there will be found full of information, which they are very ready to impart.
But I was obliged to pass through Besancon, a fortified town, and consequently subject to the same inconvenience. I took it into my head to turn about and to go to Salins, under the pretense of going to see M. de Marian, the nephew of M. Dupin, who had an employment at the salt-works, and formerly had given me many invitations to his house.
Its mission was therefore at once both offensive and defensive: to cover Nancy and continue toward the west the attack of the First Army. After having repulsed, August 10 and 11, 1914, the strong German attacks in the region of Spincourt and of Château Salins the Second Army took the offensive and went forward almost without stopping during four days of uninterrupted fighting.
We have left the gentler beauties of the Doubs behind us, and are now in one of the most romantic and picturesque regions of all France. Salins, perhaps the only cosmopolitan town that the Jura can be said to possess, since hither English and other tourists flock in the summer season, is superbly situated a veritable fairy princess guarded by monster dragons!
Four tremendous mountain peaks protect it on every side, towering above the little town with imposing aspect; and it is no less strongly defended by art, each of these mountain tops being crested with fortifications. Salins bears indeed a formidable front to the enemy, and no wonder the Prussians could not take it.
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