Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
Up till the moment of my departure from Arbois, a little town few English travellers have even heard of, I had been engaged in earnest friendly talk with a Protestant pastor, and also with a schoolmaster and Scripture reader from the heart of the Jura; and no sooner did I arrive at Lons-le-Saunier than I found myself as much at home in two charming family circles as if I had known them all my life.
Many other no less interesting excursions are to be made from Lons-le-Saunier, but I am a belated traveller, overtaken by autumn rains and chills, and must hasten on my way. September and October are often glorious months in the Jura, but it is safest to come sooner, and then picnics innumerable can be made, and fine weather relied upon from day to day.
But the excursion to be made from Lons-le-Saunier is that to the wonderful rock-shut valley and old Abbey of Baume, Baume-les-Messieurs, as it is called, to distinguish it from the town of Baume-les-Dames, near Besancon. This is reached by a delightful drive of an hour and a half, or easily on foot by good pedestrians, and is on no account to be omitted.
On reaching Lons-le-Saunier, Ney received a letter from Napoleon, summoning him to join his standard as "the bravest of the brave." In how far he guided or followed the sentiments of his soldiery we know not, but the fact is certain, that he and they put themselves in motion forthwith, and joined the march of Buonaparte on the 17th at Auxerre.
As we mount, we get a magnificent panorama to our right, the plain of La Bresse, to-day blue and dim as a summer sea; to our left, the Jura range, dark purple shadows here and there flecking the green mountain sides; the pretty little town of Lons-le-Saunier at our feet.
Sixty-nine department administrations had protested, and, in almost all the towns of the west, the south, the east and the center of France, at Caen, Alencon, Evreux, Rennes, Brest, Lorient, Nantes and Limoges, at Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nimes and Marseilles, at Grenoble, Lyons, Clermont, Lons-le-Saunier, Besancon, Macon and Dijon, the citizens, assembled in their sections, had provoked, or maintained by cheering them on, the acts of their administrators.
It is a monument alike worthy of the artist and his subject, another instance of that dignified realism for which David d'Angers was so remarkable. There is, however, some doubt as to Bichat's birth-place; Lons-le-Saunier, as I have before mentioned, contesting the honour with Bourg. On the principle that two monuments to a great man are better than none at all, each place claims the honour.
If the antiquities of Lons-le-Saunier are insignificant, no one can fail, however, to be struck with the handsome public buildings, chiefly modern, which are on a scale quite magnificent for a town of only eleven thousand inhabitants.
It was now that Marshal Ney volunteered his services to take the command of a large body of troops, whose fidelity was considered sure, and who were about to be sent to Lons-le-Saunier, there to intercept and arrest the invader.
The gardens of the hospital are adorned by a bust of the great anatomist, Bichat, whose birth-place, like that of Homer, is disputed. Bourg-en-Bresse disputes the honour with Lons-le-Saunier, and Bourg possesses the splendid monument to Bichat's memory by David d'Angers.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking