“Vicisti,
Galtere, tui sunt signa triumphi
Deppa, Locoveris, Alacris-mons,
Butila, molta,
Deppa maris portus,
Alacris-mons locus amoenus,
Villa Locoveris, rus
Butila, molta per urbem.
Hactenus haec Regis
Richardi jura fuere;
Haec rex sancivit, haec
papa, tibique tuere[11].”
Nor was this the only memorial of the fact; for the advantages of the exchange were so generally recognized, that the name of Walter became proverbial; and to this day it is said in Normandy of a man who over-reaches another, “c’est un fin Gautier.” It might be inferred from the terms of the bargain in which Dieppe merely appears as one of the items of the account, that it was then a place of little consequence; yet, one of the old chroniclers speaks of it at the time it was taken by the French under Philip Augustus, as
“portus
fama celeberrimus atque
Villa potens opibus.”
These historians, however, of former days are not always the most accurate; but from this period the annals of the place are preserved, and at certain epochs it is far from unimportant in French history: as, when Talbot raised in 1442 the fortress called the Bastille, a defence so strong and in so well-chosen a situation, that even Vauban honored its memory by lamenting its destruction; when the inhabitants fought with the Flemings in the channel, in 1555; when Henry IVth, with an army of less than four thousand men, fled hither in 1589, as to his last place of refuge, winning the hearts of the people by his frank address:—“Mes amis, point de ceremonie, je ne demande que vos coeurs, bon pain, bon vin, et bon visage d’hotes;” and when, as I have already mentioned, the town sustained from our fleet a bombardment of three days’ duration, and was reduced by it to ashes.
For the excellence of its sailors, Dieppe has at all times been renowned: no less an authority than the President de Thou has pronounced them to be men, “penes quos praecipua rei nauticae gloria semper fuit;” and they have proved their claims to this encomium, not only by having supplied to the navy of France the celebrated Abraham Du Quesne, the successful rival of the great Ruyter, but still more so by having taken the lead in expeditions to Florida[12]; by having established a colony for the promotion of the fur trade in Canada, if indeed they were not the original discoverers of that country; and by having been the first Christians who ever made a settlement on the coast of Senegal. This last-mentioned event took place, according to French writers, at as early a period as the XIVth century; and, though the establishment was not of long duration, its effects have been permanent; for it is owing to the consignments of ivory then made to Dieppe, that many of the inhabitants were induced to become workers in that substance; a trade which they preserve to the present time, and carry the art to such perfection that they have few