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Updated: May 13, 2025
Tourville's fifty vessels were no match for the ninety ships of the allies, and after five hours of a brave struggle the French were forced to fly along the rocky coast of the Cotentin. Twenty-two of their vessels reached St.
But without attributing to the art of Coutances or the Côtentin so miraculous a development as this, the district was at all times fertile in men who could build in the styles of their several ages. A journey through the peninsula shows its scenery, so varied and in many parts so rich, adorned by a succession of great buildings worthy of the land in which they are placed.
By this itinerary you will not have taken all you should into view; you will not have touched the coast nor seen how Normandy is based upon the sea, and you will not have known the Cotentin, which is a little State of its own and is the quadrilateral which Normandy thrusts forth into the Channel. If you have the leisure, therefore, return by the north.
Froissart says, 'He did not turn aside to the city of Coutances, but went on toward the great town of Saint-Lo in Cotentin, which at that time was very rich and of great merchandise and three times as great as the city of Coutances. Michael of Northburgh says that Barfleur was about equal in importance to Sandwich and Carentan to Leicester, Saint-Lo greater than Lincoln, and Caen greater than any city in England except London.
So Constantia has become Coutances; but the adjective Constantinus has become Côtentin. City and district then bear the same Imperial name as that other Constantia on the Rhine with which Coutances is doomed to get so often confounded. How often has one seen Geoffrey of Mowbray described as "Bishop of Constance."
It was no good arguing when the case was as clear as the sun at noon-day. Now, in the case of Wallis, it is certainly much easier to say what the etymology of the name is not than to say what it is; but in the case of the Côtentin one would have thought that it was as clear as the sun at noon-day the other way.
And in order to be within reach of the English cruiser d'Aché had to be near Cotentin; he had many devoted friends in this region and was sure of finding a safe retreat. Mme. de Combray, taking advantage of the fair of Saint-Clair which was held every year in mid-July, near the Château of Donnay, could conduct her guest beyond Falaise without exciting suspicion.
This was the young Duke's first introduction to serious warfare; but he had tougher work than this to go through before his career was over. To the east of Caen stretches a somewhat dreary country, which forms a striking contrast to the rich meadows and orchards of the Bessin, while it in no way approaches to the wildness of the sterner portions of the Côtentin.
From the rocks of the Norman Scarborough, one of the only two railways which find their way into the Côtentin will carry the traveller through a district whose look, like that of so much of this side of Normandy, is thoroughly English, to Valognes, with its endless fragments of old domestic architecture, remnants of the days when Valognes was a large and aristocratic town, and with its church, where the architect has ventured, not wholly without success, on the bold experiment of giving its central parts the shape of a Gothic cupola.
How did he who derived Côtentin from côte deal with other names of districts following the same form? The Bessin, the land of Bayeux, might perhaps be twisted into something funny, but the Avranchin could hardly be anything but the district of Avranches, and this one might have given the key to the others.
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