Bouillon, with its mountains and woods, and its romantic ruin, being one of the loveliest spots in the Ardennes, soon became a favourite place for holiday-makers, and had for many years a peaceful existence before the storm burst so near it in that eventful year 1870. 'I was there,' M. Camille Lemonnier says, 'in the midst of the _débâcle_, and, sick at heart, and in the horror of those days, wrote these words: "A furious coming and going filled the streets. We found the _Place_ crowded with townspeople, peasants, lancers, prisoners, and wounded men struggling among the horses' hoofs, the wheels of wagons, and the feet of the stretcher-bearers. A horrible noise rose in the darkness of the evening from this tumultuous crowd, who moved aimlessly about, with staring eyes, lost in agony, and scarcely knowing what they did. A stupor seemed to weigh on every brain; and all round, looking down on the seething mass, lights twinkled in the windows of the houses. Behind the white blinds of one house, the Hôtel de la Poste, at the corner to the left of the bridge, a restless shadow moved about all night long. It was the shadow of the last Bonaparte, watching, and a prisoner, while near him the frantic cries wrung by defeat from the wreckage of the French army died away in sobs and spasms."'
Next morning Napoleon III., who had spent the night in the Hôtel de la Poste, left with a guard of Prussian officers, climbed up the road, through the woods which lie between the valleys of the Semois and the Lesse, to Libramont, whence he journeyed by train to Wilhelmshoe.
Since then Bouillon has returned to the quiet times which preceded the Franco-German War; but that student of history must have a very dull imagination who does not find much to think of in this narrow valley, on the frontiers of Belgium and France, where the past and the present meet, the day when Duke Godfrey rode off to plant his standard on the walls of Jerusalem, and the day when his castle looked down on the humiliation of the ruler who began his reign by making war about the Holy Places of Palestine.
Abbey of the Dunes, 152-156; of Melrose, 153
'Adoration of the Immaculate Lamb,' 61, 171
Aix-la-Chapelle, churches of, enriched, 284; Peace of, 354