Around The World Without Flying: Rouen Part 1 - Joan of Arc and other tragedies

After Les Andelys, we kept cruising along the Seine. The low hills had many patches of limestone, some of which looked as though it once had been mined.

We then arrived at Rouen, a well-known, bustling major river town. What it is possibly most well-known for is the tragic story of Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake at the town centre. About twenty years after her death at a young age, her mother and her mother’s lawyers succeeded in exposing the prejudice and lies and manipulation that led to Joan’s death, and in having her declared innocent of the charges laid against her.

Joan was accused of being a witch on the grounds that she wore men’s clothes when she went into battle (on her horse!). But when she was imprisoned, and her clothes were taken away from her, she was only supplied with more men’s clothes for her trial. As a result of appearing in these, she was judged to be defying the church by continuing her ‘evil’ practice, and was condemned to death. The presiding judge apparently was a very powerful bishop who felt threatened by this simple girl, but in fact had no jurisdiction in that court. The two other men who served the court as jurors that day were afraid of the bishop and simply followed his orders. The English do not have clean hands in this tragic story either, as it suited them very well at the time for her to die. Apparently they were actively involved in the plot to have her killed.

Now Joan of Arc is regarded as a heroine. There is a simple memorial to her at the spot where she was burned alive. There is an unusual church right next to that. I will talk about that in the next post.

The town has another tragic story behind it as well. To stop the advancing Germans in WW2, the townspeople decided to destroy all their bridges across the Seine. The Germans were not deterred by this. They immediately proceeded to build one by joining barges together, but exacted their revenge by refusing to let the townspeople put out a fire that was racing through its historic buildings. The fire burned for three days. The Germans only relented when the fire reached the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral. During all of this, people in the church were hurriedly removing as many stained glass windows as they could in the churches and the cathedral and storing them in cellars, etc., to protect them. That saved most of the windows from destruction during the bombing of Rouen.

Our walking tour of Rouen was fascinating. In the early days, people were taxed by the area of the ground floor. So they built that as small as they could. The successive floors above it, however, were made larger and larger. The result was by about the third or fourth floor, each building was almost touching the building across the narrow street. The consequence of this and the practice of tipping their wastes down into the street below from their windows was the streets became foetid and completely unhygienic. Little wonder that when the plague reached the town, it spread very rapidly and many people died. After that the walls of the buildings were more vertical.

One feature of the town that was of great interest was its remarkable, beautiful old clock above each side of an archway leading to the town square. This had a silver ball above the clock face that was nestled into a black hollow. The ball slowly rotated so that it showed what the phase of the Moon would be that night. Below the clock face, seven ‘gods’ would slowly move around so that the one in the centre showed what day of the week it was. This was built at a time when the common people did not have any schooling. Interestingly, the clock only had one hand.

I will tell you more tales of Rouen and also show you photos of the churches and cathedral in the next post.

Les Andelys.

The chalky cliffs along the river.

This limestone was either naturally layered or may have been mined.

The bridge near our river ship in Rouen.

An old building that survived the fire during WW2.

A close-up of the top of that building.

You can see you this building 'expanded' outward as each floor was added.

Two very old buildings built in the vertical style.

The following photos show a range of old buildings.

This building was used for dyeing cloth. There were a lot of such businesses in the old city. Their wastes added to the sanitation and odour problem.

A close-up of a beautiful tree in the midst of some old buildings, some of which had been restored.

This is the tree.

A fun decoration outside a florist situated in the old town. I could not resist taking this photo and the next.

The amazing clock above the archway.

A very special Jewish building. Apparently a really old one with important artefacts was found below this one, and is in the process of being restored. It is believed that might be the oldest Jewish building in Europe.