Until 1756 Issoudun was one of the gayest of garrison towns. A judicial drama, which was the talk of France at that time, deprived the town of its soldiery; the case of the Lieutenant-General of the district against the Marquis de Chapt, whose son, a dragoon officer, was put to death, justly perhaps, but traitorously, for some amorous misdemeanor.
The occupation by the 44th half-brigade, forced upon it during the civil war, was not such as to reconcile the inhabitants to the soldier tribe.
Bourges, of which the population is annually diminishing, is a victim to the same social atrophy. Vitality is failing in these large bodies. The State is no doubt to blame, It is the duty of a Government to detect such sores in the body politic, and to remedy them by sending men of energy to the affected spots to change the state of things. Alas! far from this, such fatal and funereal peacefulness is a source of satisfaction! Besides, how is it possible to send fresh chiefs or capable judges? Who nowadays would care to be buried in a district where he can earn no credit for the good to be done? If by chance an ambitious outsider is appointed to such a place, he is soon swamped by the power of inertia, and tunes himself to the pitch of the dreadful provincial life. Issoudun would have benumbed Napoleon.
As a result of this state of things, the district of Issoudun, in 1822, was under the administration of men all natives of le Berry. Government authority was therefore nil or impotent, excepting in those cases, of course very rare, of which the evident importance demands the intervention of the law. Monsieur Mouilleron, the public prosecutor, was related to everybody, and his deputy belonged to a family in the town. The President of the Criminal Court, before he had risen to such dignity, had made himself famous by one of those speeches which, in the provinces, crown a man with a fool’s cap for the rest of his life. At the end of a case for the prosecution which would entail capital punishment, he said to the prisoner: “My poor Pierre, the case is clear; you will have your head cut off. Let that be a lesson to you.” The superintendent of police, who had held the post ever since the Restoration, had relations all over the district.
Finally, not only had religion no influence whatever, but the curé was not respected. The townsfolk—Liberals, backbiters, and ignorant—repeated more or less absurd stories about the poor man’s conduct to his housekeeper. The children went to his catechizing all the same, and were admitted to their first Communion; all the same, there was a school; Mass was said and festivals were kept; the taxes were paid, the only thing Paris requires of the provinces; and the Maire passed resolutions; but all these acts of social life were mere matters of routine. Thus the flabbiness of official life was in admirable harmony with the moral and intellectual condition of the place. The sequel of this narrative will show the results of a state of things less exceptional than might be supposed. Many towns in France, especially in the south, are very like Issoudun. And the state to which the triumph of the middle class had brought this town—the chief town of its district (or arrondissement)—awaits all France, and even Paris, if the citizen class continues to be master of the home and foreign policy of our country.
Now a word as to the topography of Issoudun. The town extends north and south on a hillside that curves towards the Châteauroux road. At the foot of the slope a canal was constructed at the time when the place was prosperous, to supply the factories, or to flood the trenches below the ramparts; it is known as la Rivière forcée, the Borrowed Stream, its waters being diverted from the Théols. The borrowed stream forms an artificial branch, returning to the natural river below the Roman suburb at a point where it is met by the Tournemine and some other affluents. These little brooks of rushing water irrigate meadows of some extent, which lie on all sides below the yellow or white hills closely dotted with black specks, for such is the aspect of the vine-land of Issoudun during seven months of the year. The vinedressers layer the vines every year, and leave nothing but a hideous stump, without any prop, at the bottom of a funnel of earth. Thus, on arriving from Vierzon, Vatan, or Châteauroux, the eye, wearied by the monotonous plain, is agreeably surprised by the appearance of the meadow-land of Issoudun, the oasis of this part of the country, supplying vegetables for ten leagues round. Below the suburb of Rome stretches one vast market-garden exclusively devoted to kitchen produce, and divided into the Upper and Lower Baltan.
A broad, long avenue, with sidewalks planted with poplars, leads from the town, across the fields, to an ancient convent called Frapesle where an English garden—unique in the district—bears the high-sounding name of Tivoli. Here, on Sundays, fond couples wander to breathe their confidences.
Traces of the former splendor of Issoudun can, of course, be discerned by an attentive observer, and the most conspicuous are the divisions of the town. The castle, which of old was a town of itself, with its walls and moats, constitutes a distinct
