Issoudun, therefore, according to the researches of this antiquary, like other cities of France whose ancient or modern autonym ends in “Dun” ("dunum”) bears in its very name the certificate of an autochthonous existence.  The word “Dun,” the appanage of all dignity consecrated by Druidical worship, proves a religious and military settlement of the Celts.  Beneath the Dun of the Gauls must have lain the Roman temple to Isis.  From that comes, according to Chaumon, the name of the city, Issous-Dun,—­“Is” being the abbreviation of “Isis.”  Richard Coeur-de-lion undoubtedly built the famous tower (in which he coined money) above the basilica of the fifth century,—­the third monument of the third religion of this ancient town.  He used the church as a necessary foundation, or stay, for the raising of the rampart; and he preserved it by covering it with feudal fortifications as with a mantle.  Issoudun was at that time the seat of the ephemeral power of the Routiers and the Cottereaux, adventurers and free-lancers, whom Henry II. sent against his son Richard, at the time of his rebellion as Comte de Poitou.

The history of Aquitaine, which was not written by the Benedictines, will probably never be written, because there are no longer Benedictines:  thus we are not able to light up these archaeological tenebrae in the history of our manners and customs on every occasion of their appearance.  There is another testimony to the ancient importance of Issoudun in the conversion into a canal of the Tournemine, a little stream raised several feet above the level of the Theols which surrounds the town.  This is undoubtedly the work of Roman genius.  Moreover, the suburb which extends from the castle in a northerly direction is intersected by a street which for more than two thousand years has borne the name of the rue de Rome; and the inhabitants of this suburb, whose racial characteristics, blood, and physiognomy have a special stamp of their own, call themselves descendants of the Romans.  They are nearly all vine-growers, and display a remarkable inflexibility of manners and customs, due, undoubtedly, to their origin,—­perhaps also to their victory over the Cottereaux and the Routiers, whom they exterminated on the plain of Charost in the twelfth century.

After the insurrection of 1830, France was too agitated to pay much attention to the rising of the vine-growers of Issoudun; a terrible affair, the facts of which have never been made public,—­for good reasons.  In the first place, the bourgeois of Issoudun refused to allow the military to enter the town.  They followed the use and wont of the bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages and declared themselves responsible for their own city.  The government was obliged to yield to a sturdy people backed up by seven or eight thousand vine-growers, who had burned all the archives, also the offices of “indirect taxation,” and had dragged through the streets a customs officer, crying out at every street lantern, “Let us