517 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Categories: Loire Valley, Off the Beaten Track in France

Discussed in this Episode

Bourges
Printemps de Bourges Music Festival
Bourges Cathedral
Palais Jacques Coeur
Guédelon Castle
Le Jardin de l'Archêveché
Sancerre
Chavignol
Musée du Berry
La Pasta (Italian restaurant in Bourges)

[00:00:00] Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 517, cinq cent dix-sept.

Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

Today on the podcast

[00:00:31] Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about the charming city of Bourges. You’ll discover its rich history, from medieval battles to the Grand Jean, Duke of Berry. Learn about the famous Printemps de Bourges music festival, and savour local culinary delights. Whether you’re a history buff, a culture enthusiast, or simply curious about lesser known French towns, this episode is packed with insights and anecdotes that will make Bourges your next must visit destination. Stay tuned.

Podcast supporters

[00:01:06] Annie Sargent: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my itinerary consult service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the Southwest of France in my electric car.

You can browse all of that at my boutique: Joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

And remember, Patreon supporters get the podcast ad-free, and as soon as it’s ready. Click on the link in the show notes to enjoy this Patreon reward for as little as 2$ per month.

The Magazine segment

[00:01:38] Annie Sargent: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss some tips for North Americans visiting France, especially those who wish to move to France someday.

Bootcamp 2025

[00:01:50] Annie Sargent: And good news, the reservation system for Bootcamp 2025 is now open to all. You can join me and Elyse in France in real life for Bootcamp 2025. This is a 10-day immersive tour starting the morning of May 10th, 2025 of course, and ending late on May 18th in Toulouse.

You’ll have the possibility of taking French classes every weekday morning, and the rest of the time we’ll visit some of the best attractions of the Southwest, including Albi, Carcassonne, the Painted Cave of Pêche Merle, The Castle of Foix, and several more.

You can hear previous bootcampers talk about their experiences on episodes 445 and 498 of the podcast. If you’d like to read more about the specifics or secure your spot, head over to joinusinfrance.com/bootcamp2025, no spaces or dashes. Let’s make 2025 a year of unforgettable French memories.

Annie and Elyse

[00:03:05] Annie Sargent: Bonjour Elyse!

[00:03:07] Elyse Rivin: Bonjour, Annie.

[00:03:08] Annie Sargent: We are recording remotely today. I’m in Spain for a few days at the beach and you are in Toulouse where you’re getting very hot.

[00:03:17] Elyse Rivin: It’s getting hot, but honestly, I am relieved because it is breathable today. The high 80s is not the same as the high 90s, there’s some air, I’m in my office room, and I can actually see some movement in the trees, which means that there’s actually a tiny breeze, so, I’ll be okay today.

[00:03:35] Annie Sargent: Yeah, we’re recording this mid-August, well, you won’t hear it mid-August, so never mind, we shouldn’t have started like that.

Exploring Bourges: First Impressions

[00:03:40] Annie Sargent: We’re talking about Bourges today!

[00:03:42] Elyse Rivin: We’re talking about Bourges! What is Bourges? Where is Bourges? Bourges!

[00:03:46] Annie Sargent: Beautiful, beautiful. I mean, I was just there recently because that was our first stop with my husband on our trek to Lille.

And I thought it was a lovely town. I hadn’t visited before. I have a good friend who lives in Bourges, but I didn’t visit her because we were there for such a short time, I thought, no, we only have a few hours, we got to see the city, and not just sit at a table with our friend, which would have been what I would have done otherwise.

[00:04:12] Elyse Rivin: Ah, so you don’t, hope she’s not listening to this, she’ll be…

[00:04:15] Annie Sargent: You know, she’s a German teacher, so I don’t think she listens to anything in English. Anyway, she’s a French girl and a German teacher, I don’t think English was her thing. It was never her thing.

[00:04:24] Elyse Rivin: It was never her thing,

Historical Significance of Bourges

[00:04:25] Annie Sargent: At any rate, Bourges is a lovely place and I want you to tell us about the history a little bit, please.

The Printemps de Bourges Music Festival

[00:04:31] Elyse Rivin: Interestingly enough, it’s a place that a lot of people I think have heard of, but I don’t think many people go to, who are not French.In France right now, in the year 2024, probably the thing that is the most associated with the city of Bourges is it’s a very, very famous music festival, which is called The Printemps de Bourges, which is a huge, huge event that lasts for, I’m not even sure, I didn’t check to make sure, but I think it lasts for about four or five days, maybe up to a week. It’s an enormous music festival with all kinds of music, big headliners and everything.

[00:05:05] Annie Sargent: When is that usually?

[00:05:07] Elyse Rivin: In the springtime. Butit’s not one of those where it’s just a rave party kind of thing, it’s got enough music for all kinds of different age groups.

Maybe not the super old, but otherwise, lots of people to go to.

Bourges, location on the map of France

[00:05:17] Elyse Rivin: But I think otherwise, Bourges is, and it was for me until the one time I stopped for basically a half a day with my husband, it’s in the middle of the country. It’s actually considered to be almost in the dead center, although if you look at a map, it’s not quite, it’s a little bit further north. It’s 245 kilometers south of Paris. It’s an old royal city that in the 1300s, 1400s and 1500s was extremely wealthy, doing a lot of commerce. And was very important because of the royal family that was associated with it.

Andit’s just, it’s kind of a little bit of a sleepy city. It’s got 66,000 people. It’s the capital of the Department of the Cher, my Cher,which of course is a small river. But it’s not super famous and so, I think that to go there you have to really want to go there, or it’s on the route going to somewhere else, basically. Yeah. This is what happens, you know. Which may not be a problem for the people who live there, because some of the cities that have so many tourists are just tired of having them come through, you know.

It’s in an area that has lots of little rivers,the land is relatively rich, but it has no specific geographic features that are spectacular. You know, it isn’t on top of a big hill, it isn’t where the mountains are, things like that. So it’s part of what is really the center.

The Hundred Years’ War and Bourges

[00:06:41] Elyse Rivin: And interestingly enough, in the old, old, old, old days, that is when France was not yet the size that it is today, when it was a smaller kingdom, and the kingdom of Aquitaine was huge, andBourges is a city that lived through major events connected to the war between the English and the French, the war of a hundred years, which we probably should try and do a version of as a podcast, but it’s so long and complicated. But Bourges was considered to be the southern limit of the kingdom of France for a long time.

It basically is very close to other regions, the Anjou, the Poitou, these other regions, if you take a look at the map of France, that for a long time were considered to be English. And I think there are still some English who think they still should be, you know, you never know. Any of you out there listening who are English, don’t start up with us about this, you know, really. But it’s interesting to know that it became a royal city because of a very specific event.

Basically,the war of between the English and the French, which really lasted a very long time, and for those of you out there who have no idea, we did a long time ago, of course, we talked about Eleanor of Aquitaine. Aquitaine was basically a separate kingdom, but because she married the King of England as a second husband, he claimed basically all of that territory, which is a good chunk of the West and the Southwest of France. And that led to all these disputes that lasted for a couple of centuries, actually. And a lot of the lords in these areas, and this includes the areas around Bourges, they weren’t necessarily English in the sense that we imagine today.

They were from there, they spoke either French or they spoke Occitan, but they pledged their loyalty to the English King as opposed to the French King. And that’s when you get into all kinds of trouble. You know, this is when you get all these wars between one group and the other. But the region around Bourges, which was very old, and had existed as a small city for ages inside walls, it became really important in 1300s, when there was a French king named Jean Le Bon. I don’t know too much about him, except that he’s considered to be Jean Le Bon, which means he was the good king.He was one of the ones that started really fighting with the English, I don’t know, who started first? Who knows?

Anyway, he got taken prisoner by one of his cousins, one of his English cousins, who of course was the kings, they were all cousins anyway. He had three sons. The oldest, of course, destined to be the new king, that is, Charles V.

But in those days, and later on, even into the 1500s, 1600s, when you took a king prisoner, it was a good way to make a lot of money. Because what you did was you ransomed him off. So, the English King, basically said, okay, you got to pay. I’ll give you, you know, you can go home, he was taken to England, but give me somebody in exchange as a token of your faith in the ransom.

So he gave them his third son. His third son was Jean. And this was in 1360. And Jean was 20 years old. The king himself was released. They say he paid the equivalent of 10,000 gold coins, which probably today would be millions, who knows how much that would actually be today.

Jean, Duke of Berry: Patron of Bourges

[00:09:51] Elyse Rivin: Because of the stalwart bravery of this third son, who of course in feudal times was destined to have absolutely nothing except some land to have a chateau on, because he was not the first and he was not the second. The king, after being released, honored him by making him a duke, and made him the duke of the region of Berry, B-E-R-R-Y, like in berries, and the capital of that region was Bourges.

[00:10:16] Annie Sargent: Aha.

That’s really not very nice. Like, oh, I need a, somebody in ransom and I’ll give him my third son as the ransom. Like, okay?! We wouldn’t do that today, would we?

[00:10:27] Elyse Rivin: Well, no, today we would just send a drone, you know, and that would be the end of that. But they did that. Even 200 years later, Francois I had to ransom, he was ransomed off, sent his two sons to be prisoner in exchange for himself in Northern Italy. So, it was a custom that lasted for quite a long time, actually.

It sucks, yeah, but he actually, luckily for him, once the money was paid, Jean, now Duc de Berry, Duc de Berry and Count of Anjou and a whole bunch of other territories, if you take a look at the map, he was basically given a big chunk of France in reward for being taken prisoner.

Buthe was released relatively soon, and he made Bourges one of his headquarters. I mean, he obviously was the son of, he was one of the sons of the king, and that meant that they all had chateaus pretty much everywhere from the Loire going all the way up to Paris.

Buthe actually made Bourges the center of his realm, if you want to call it that.

And he was an extremely interesting guy. He was born in 1340 and died in 1416, which meant he died at the age of 76, which was a really nice old age for that time period.

Most of that time period, if you read all these books about what happened in France with the different dynasties, this is the dynasty of the Valois, by the way, for those who are interested in any of that kind of history.But in a lot of cases, it was the brothers of the kings who plotted against the kings, who started revolutions, who did all these things.

It turns out that Jean Duc de Berry did none of those things. He was incredibly loyal, both to his father, then to his brother, then to his nephew, Charles VI, and was rewarded all through his life, because of this incredible loyalty. He was a brave military man. I assume at that time that all the sons had to learn how to be knights, and fight, and all that kind of stuff anyway.

But he was also extremely well educated, which I don’t think was necessarily the case of everybody. And during his entire life, one of the things he did, which is one of the reasons he has come down in posterity, is he became an enormous collector of books. Which you have to imagine in the 1300s was manuscripts that are all handwritten, often by monks, which are precious, they’re worth millions, and millions, and millions.Objects, he was a collector of fine objects, of jewelry. He was interested in philosophy and science. He sounds like he was an absolutely fascinating man.

And under his auspices, Bourges became very wealthy. He allowed the middle class to grow. He was not very strict, and he developed all kinds ofcommercial interests for the area.

So it’s really thanks to him in a sense that Bourges had its golden period that lasted for a certain amount of time. And he, of course, built a huge palace, which unfortunately doesn’t exist anymore. It was destroyed in various phases over the last few centuries. Apparently, there is one piece of wall that’s part of theone of the administrative buildings of the city of Bourges. Otherwise, it apparently, it was magnificent. It was like when we went to Chantilly, which I’ll mention in a minute anyway, in relation to him, it was apparently a magnificent, enormous, enormous château. But whatever, I mean, it’s not there.

And he also built his own version of the Sainte Chapelle, because he had actually collected some relics from Jerusalem that included part of the crown of thorns, things like that, legitimately, apparently, that was supposed to be really what they were.

And so he made himself a mini version of the Sainte Chapelle, and that too has disappeared. So, there’s documentation of it, and beautiful little engravings that come from the 1500s that are pictures of what it looked like. But unfortunately for us, you know, there isn’t much left of that. They’re just little bits and pieces in other places.

But his posterity, his history is so much connected to Bourges because of what he did for the city. And I was just excited to know that, to find out more about him. Because if you remember, I don’t know if you remember this specific moment, but when we went together to Chantilly, and we were in the library, I don’t know if you remember how excited, as the French would say, “j’étais exitée comme un poux”.

Books of Hours

[00:14:50] Elyse Rivin: Which for those of you who don’t understand French means I was jumping around like a little flea, you know, because they had on display the last and the greatest of all the books of hours that he had commissioned. And he is known for having done, having ordered and having made for him 15 of these incredible illuminated manuscripts.

And a book of hours was what anybody who was wealthy could command and order. They had little versions that were like the equivalent of a pocket size you could put in a little purse for women, and they had bigger versions, and then they had standardized huge versions of these magnificent illuminated manuscripts.

And what they were, were books that were the equivalent of both a prayer book and an almanac.

And so you have, every page has a prayer, and then the page next to it has an illuminated p icture, basically made with gold, silver, ground lapis lazuli, the precious stones, that shows a scene from life at the time, or a scene that’s from the Bible. And the people who made these books, and by the 14th century, actually, we know who some of them were.

And interestingly enough, he ordered 15 of these. He loved them so much. These, even at the time that these were, he was alive, this was an incredibly, it’s like ordering a Lamborghini, you know, and having 15 of them made for you, you know, custom made. I mean, this is like, really, if you’re really rich, what would you do with your money?

Well, this is what he did with his money, you know. And they all survive, interestingly enough, in various different museums. A few of them are in France, not all of them, but the one we saw in Chantilly, was the last of them, and it was finished the year he died in 1416.

[00:16:42] Annie Sargent: He probably just liked to touch them, look at them, read them, I guess.

[00:16:47] Elyse Rivin: I think so. He hired, there were these, and interestingly enough, the artists who worked on them, because you had monks who did the writing of the actual prayers and things, and then you had artists that were hired to do the illustrations. So that’s the illumination of the manuscripts. And there were these two Flemish brothers, the Limburg brothers, who did three or four of his books. And they were the ones who did this last one. And they apparently were also very old, because this is the last work they did, and this was the last thing he had finished the year that he actually died. And Van Eyck, who’s a very, very famous painter, actually participated in working on a couple of these.

So for me, you know, this is like, this is extraordinary. This is what you call the mécénat in its best. The last one, which you can see, and if you go to Chantilly, there’s one in the Louvre, there’s one in the British Museum. But the very last one, which is it’s called, I love it because they all had slightly different names, this is called ‘The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry’. Okay? Because you have the hours, you have the rich hours, and then you have the very rich hours, and there you go, you know?

[00:17:54] Annie Sargent: Wonderful. Very rich. Very rich.

[00:17:58] Elyse Rivin: So, thanks to this Duke of Berry, and it’s interesting because he’s Jean, the first Duke of Berry because of course his son and his grandson and ever they kept the titles until the end of the old regime, until the Revolution. But it was thanks to him that the city flourished, and it was thanks to him that the middle class became very, very important in Bourges.

What does the word “Bourgeois” mean?

[00:18:22] Elyse Rivin: And so, we were just talking about the whole idea of the word in French when we say someone is bourgeois, okay?

[00:18:30] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:18:31] Elyse Rivin: It’s a word that, as an American, I know how to use, but I’m always questioning whether I really understand the French concept of someone who’s bourgeois, because it’s always used as an insult in France, you know?

[00:18:44] Annie Sargent: Yes. It’s someone who has family money. There’s money in the family. It’s not money you made yourself, usually. It’s money that you, it’s been in the family, it’s inherited. But it’s, it can be inherited from starting a store or, you know, it can be inherited from anything, but, you know, a bourge is somebody who has plenty of money that,

[00:19:07] Elyse Rivin: It’s somebody who has plenty of money, but who is not aristocrat, who is not noble, who has no title.

[00:19:12] Annie Sargent: No title, yeah. Just money in the family, like, you know, no problem, you crush your Lamborghini, well, you get another one.

[00:19:20] Elyse Rivin: You get another one. That’s already being fairly up there on the scale of things, economically.

[00:19:24] Annie Sargent: But it’s funny because it’s the same word, un bourge, à Bourges.

So, I it’s, you know, c’est bourge, Bourges. I said that to the lady at the tourist office, and she smiled and she said, On n’est pas qui bourges comme ca, we’re not that, you know, that rich, but it does feel like a city that had plenty of money.

You can see some beautiful stone buildings in the city center. I did not spend enough time to get an impression of the overall city. Besides the fact that it looked very nice, not huge, you know, a very pleasant place and with plenty of money. You can tell they had money in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance.

[00:20:07] Elyse Rivin: Which is exactly right. If you look up the etymology, of course, it is true that now the Bourges, people from Bourges call themselves the Bourgeois, but in fact, the word doesn’t come from the city. The word comes from,I don’t know what the origin of the actual word, which is the, if you just say B O U R G without the E S at the end, you know, it’s bourg, but it actually means the first, the first extension of the city in the old medieval fortified walled version of a city that was the wealthy upper middle class.

And in Toulouse, it’s the area around Saint Sonin, that was the first bourg, and it’s because the church was there, the people who had enough money built their houses eight, nine hundred years ago close to the church. So it’s interesting, but of course it’s kind of a nice thing for the people of Bourges to say, I’m a bourgeois, ha ha ha, you know.

Yeah. You don’t have to worry about whether I have money or not, you know. But Jean Duc of Berry was not a bourgeois. He was a member of the royalty.

And it is really interesting to know that he has gone down in history as being one of the few brothers of a king who did not plot against his brother, who did not plot against his nephew.

He was really loyal right up till the end. And I guess he inherited, not only all of the goods that were left, but the reputation of his branch of the family kind of stayed with him, so it’s kind of nice. It’s not one of these, oh my God, we’re going to see another movie where they’re all killing each other off.

No, absolutely not. When he died, he had in the inventory of his inheritance, there were over 300 manuscripts. I don’t know if it’s possible to imagine now the amount of time it would take to do a book, you know, it took six months to a year to do a book. So having 300 manuscripts was really kind of like having 300 Lamborghini, I mean, it was kind of, in the same order of things, you know.

It’s interesting too that he was very successful politically in representing the king. And his only failure, and this is fascinating to me because it has to do, of course, with the fact that we both are in Toulouse, we’re in the Southwest, his only failure was in trying to get the region of Languedoc to behave. And he couldn’t,he, as diplomatic as he was, it was the time of the Count of Gaston Phoebus, you know, the Count of Foix, and apparently, he was trying to calm things down in the Languedoc area.

This is, of course, in the end of the 1300s. There was a lot of fighting still with the different groups that were loyal to the English. And then there was the independent groups that wanted to not be associated with the King of France and all of this. And he was successful in basically adding back on to the Kingdom of France: the Anjou, the Poitou, the area of Angers, the area around Sainte and La Rochelle, the Limousain, and the Quercy. If you take a look at the map, this is a huge chunk of those south and west of France. The only part where he failed was Languedoc, huh? We’re really, we’re stubborn in this area around here, huh? Yeah. No, he gave up, he went back up north, eh, these crazies who speak Occitan, who the hell wants them anyway, you know, like, let him worry about things themselves.

Jacques Coeur

[00:23:19] Elyse Rivin: And so, that takes us, of course, to the second person who’s really famous and associated with Bourges and who became very famous thanks to the Duke of Berry, and that is Jacques Coeur.

And I know that you did see the outside, you didn’t go in there, one time I was in Bourges, I did actually visit the mansion because I read about it in my studies of the architecture of that time. And he was the ultimate perfect example of the bourgeois who made it.

And in his life, I spent a couple of hours yesterday reading up about him, this guy was a unbelievable. This was the Zuckerman of his time. In another realm, he was, it’s fascinating, absolutely fascinating, his father was a fur trader. I was looking to see if there was another word for that, even in English, but I don’t think there is. Who became, and this is also something that’s hard to grasp, because at the time, there was no uniform money in France.

I guess not anywhere, I have no idea. But each region was allowed to make its own money by order of the king. And so his father had moved up the social ladder as a middle class, non aristocrat, and had become the argentier. That is, he was allowed to make silver coins for the royal family, and therefore, I guess, to have them distributed in the area, and so became very wealthy. And his son, Jacques, who apparently, unlike the Duke of Berry, couldn’t care less about education studies or anything else like that.

He apparently, very early in his teens, was seen to have a very good nose for business.

[00:24:56] Annie Sargent: Well, if you can print the money, it’s easier.

[00:25:00] Elyse Rivin: Well, I mean, but what Jacques Coeur did, and this is what’s really incredible, is that he not only took over the business of his father, but he managed, in the space of a not very long period of time, by the time he was 30, he was immensely wealthy, he managed to earn the favor of the king, who was now Charles.

First Charles V, and then Charles VI. And he developed for the King of France, international trade that had only been the exclusive venue of the Venetians, of the Lombards. So that is basically of the Italians. The French were not at that point, you might make a comment that it still has, there is still an issue, but they were not very good at international trade.

And he managed not only to become the person who printed and made coins for the king and for the realm, but he managed to get enough money together. I mean, obviously by skimming off a certain amount no matter what, he developed, he created a fleet of ships. He had a base, he was living in Bourges, he was from Bourges, he was born there, but he eventually created a huge base in Montpellier, next to the sea. And he created a fleet of ships and was the first Frenchman to do commerce with the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East. And so, he did commerce as far as the Baltic countries, he actually traded wheat with Russia, he went as far east as you could go into Syria, and the Ottoman Empire, and apparently was so good at what he did that he did it without animosity.

He was good at the talk, so he made friends everywhere he went and he was considered to be an incredible, incredible businessman. He could basically talk anybody into anything, buy anything from anybody. He made himself a, an enormous, enormous, enormous fortune, of course, and made a fortune for the king.

And he was considered to be both a statesman, a military leader,he was absolutely incredible. He sounds, and not only that, but the statue of him makes him look like he was really handsome. Who knows? I mean these statues, they were probably made in the 19th century, but he sure looks like he was cute, you know. He was born at the, pretty much at the end of the life of the Duke of Berry.

He was born in more or less, 1395, and he died in 1456, so he was in his late 50s when he died.But I think unfortunately this is typical, what happened in his life was that, in spite of his gifts as his, and his brilliance as a businessman, and really he is one of the first people to do what we could really now call international trade, I mean, on a high, high level,he was accused, by those who were jealous of him. Because he was not an aristocrat. He never became an aristocrat. I mean, he was given a title, but basically he was simply a middle class roturier. He was someone who was not a nobleman. And so there were nobles and royals who were extremely jealous of him, as you can imagine. But also there was an event that happened.

So first he was the businessman for Charles VI, and then towards the end of his life, towards the end of the 1300s, and into the early 1400s, he was the golden boy business for Charles VII. And Charles VII, is the king associated with Joan of Arc.

[00:28:26] Elyse Rivin: Joan of Arc saved the kingdom for the throne for Charles VII.

But Charles VII is also famous for something else. There’s a wonderful, very famous painting by a man named Jean Fouquet. It’s a strange painting, you’ve probably seen it Annie, because it’s in almost every book, history of French painting. It’s a painting, it’s a medieval painting, so it’s of course from this time period, of a woman with one breast exposed.

She looks like she’s half bald, but she’s wearing this elegant crown and these jewels. And it’s a very, very famous painting because it’s a painting that was done of the mistress,the love of the life of Charles VII, and her name was Agnès Sorel. She really existed, andCharles VII had met her, she was the daughter of a nobleman, but they met when she was 20, and he was 40. Of course, she was already married and had children.

But he was madly, madly in love with her. And for the next eight years until her death, she was his, not just his mistress, but she was really the love of his life. She had a whole bunch of children with him. And she was painted by these famous painters, and she became very good friends with Jacques Coeur.

[00:29:36] Annie Sargent: That is a bizarre painting.

[00:29:37] Elyse Rivin: It’s a bizarre painting. It’s very famous. It’s an extremely famous painting.

[00:29:41] Annie Sargent: She’s wearing a black dress with ties at the top and one boob is exposed. She has this veil over her head. She has a book in one hand, and a contorted hand, bizarre…

[00:29:55] Elyse Rivin: Very bizarre. It’s very bizarre. There’s another combination of a diptych with another painting Fouquet did of her with a painting next to it of Charles VII, who doesn’t look like a really, he’s like a, this long nosed, kind of in the line of De Gaulle kind of face, but he was madly in love with her, you know.

[00:30:13] Annie Sargent: Yeah, she doesn’t look like a looker, like…

[00:30:16] Elyse Rivin: She was apparently considered to be absolutely gorgeous at the time, but who knows if she really looked like what the painting looks like, you see, because really, the painting is scary.

It’s just creepy as a painting.

[00:30:26] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Intrigue of Bourges and Jacques Coeur

[00:30:27] Elyse Rivin: But she had a taste for luxury. So what happened was, Charles VII had sought refuge in Bourges, we’re going back to Bourges. Why is this all connected to Bourges?

Because after he got his throne saved by Joan of Arc, he sought refuge in Bourges because stuff was going on in Paris, and there were stillthe dukes of Burgundy and all these people who were plotting against him, you know, his throne was contested by all these people, this is so complicated, all this nonsense. Anyway, so he goes to his chateau in Bourges, and she makes friends with Jacques Coeur, and Jacques Coeur gives her trades and buys for her.

Of course she gets money from the King, but she apparently has enormous luxurious taste. And so he brings her jewels, and silks, and anything she wants, and so there are these rumors. Uh huh, uh huh. And so there are these little rumors. Who knows? There’s never been anything to know whether any of these rumors were correct or not, but what happens is…

[00:31:24] Annie Sargent: She might be friendly.

[00:31:26] Elyse Rivin: She might be friendly, exactly. She might be friendly, you know. And considering what he is supposed to have looked like, hey! Why not? You know, really? But what happens is that she does in fact die in childbirth at the age of 28. And when she does, not only do we have the, these other royals who are jealous of Jacques Coeur, his immense fortune, I mean, he’s made himself, he has seven chateaus all over the place. He has a house in Paris.

He has the beautiful house that he has himself built in gothic style in Bourges. But somebody starts the rumor that he was sleeping with Agnes Sorel, and so Charles VII decides it’s time to get rid of Jacques Coeur.

[00:32:08] Annie Sargent: Uh huh. Well, and also it looks like she died in childbirth at 28, is that what you said?

[00:32:14] Elyse Rivin: Yeah, she already had four or five children. I mean, this is not unusual, unfortunately, at the time, you know. The surviving children, by the way, he legitimized, you know, Charles VII. They actually became princesses and married, because they were all girls, married into royalty.

If you ever meet somebody on the street and they say that they’re a descendant of royalty, they could be one of those, you know, I mean, you never know.

The Downfall of Jacques Coeur

[00:32:38] Elyse Rivin: So, Jacques Coeur, who has no, or dumbly, or blindly, doesn’t realize, I think, what’s going on around him. This is already a time when he’s become so rich that he’s richer than the king, basically. This is the deal, right? This story happens a few times in history.

We know what happens to people like that, right? So, there’s a council with the king and a whole bunch of his counselors. And Jacques Coeur is waiting. He thinks it’s because they’re going to give him more business, or tell him to go do something in the Middle East or go help with a crusade. I mean, who knows what? It sounds like he really wasn’t prepared for this at all. Now he’s not a young guy anymore. In about 1450, so he’s already about 50 years old. What happens is that the royals come out of the court and basically they say you’re under arrest.He’s arrested, put in prison in Poitiers, and like is usual the case in something like this, all of his goods are confiscated. All of his properties, all of his chateaus. They leave a tiny stipend for his wife and children, and he’s put in prison.

And obviously, there were enough people that were jealous of him that he didn’t have much chance that he could plead his cause. It was known that he was cheating a little bit on the money, but that’s how they made their money in those days, you know, you skim some off the top. Like when he made the coins, apparently, he was just getting a little bit too light fingered with the amount of silver that was in them.

You know, I mean, there were things like that. But he was also doing brilliant trade. It was thanks to him that Bourges and France really became wealthy at that time. And so he was put in prison in Poitiers.

But so this is what’s fascinating, there is a book, I will mention it because I put it in the note at the end, written by a writer today, Jean Christophe Ruffin, who’s someone who I really like, about him, apparently, I think I’m going to try and find it and read it. He had been such a good businessman that the Popes liked him. Okay. I can’t imagine that he was religious at all. It had nothing to do with that, but he had done a lot of good business for the Vatican.

Escape and Exile

[00:34:37] Elyse Rivin: And so the Pope at the time, when he’s put in prison, decides to help him escape. I mean, I love this. It’s really like watching movies, you know, right? This is all, it can’t be true, but it is, right? And so he escapes. Okay. How does he escape? Well, obviously people will help them escape. And he winds up going to Rome, to the Vatican where he is kept in safety by the Pope at the time.

The Pope pleads with the King of France, that this man is innocent, that he didn’t do all these things, and that he should be exonerated, blah, blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t work. But he’s in safety in Rome. Unfortunately, it’s at this point that his wife dies, and apparently that broke his heart, that she died while he was imprisoned and everything.

And then the Pope that saved him dies. And the next pope, and I’m not sure why, tells him that he can stay in the Vatican, but he has to do something for them. And that is he has to take part of his fleet with his sailors and go and take back the Island of Chios, which is one of the Greek Islands near Rhodes, from the Ottomans. Because it’s got precious stuff on it.

Jacques Coeur dies

[00:35:45] Elyse Rivin: Who knows? I had no idea what it was… likemetals… And basically, I don’t think he was given much of a choice. It was kind of like, do this, or maybe we’ll give you back to the French, you know, I’m not even sure how that worked. But so at the age of whatever, I mean, he was almost 60 years old, he goes and heads this fleet.

And goes across the Mediterranean to try and take back the Island of Chios, and other little islands that the Ottomans had taken control of. And he dies there, of some kind of disease. And at first was buried there, and then eventually it’s his grand nephew who eventually manages to bring his body back to France.

And so what happens is that it’s the next king after Charles VII, who is a Louis, who exonerates him, that’s Louis XI, who exonerates him, and his property is given back to his family. His name is cleared of all of these dastardlyaccusations, and his grandsons and his nephews and everything continue for a certain amount of time, to take advantage of this fortune.

His story is really the story of like an adventure book.

Exploring Bourges: Landmarks and History

[00:36:53] Annie Sargent: Yeah. He was a big adventurer, it sounds like.

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[00:36:55] Annie Sargent: And his palace, I mean, they tell you when you go to Bourges, they tell you have to visit it. And the only reason why I didn’t visit it is that I was thinking that I’d go back after dark, because in Bourges in the summer, they have this kind of lighted path throughout the city center, and they kind of project lights and little stories on buildings and you’re supposed to follow this path and whatever.

Unfortunately, because this was late July, it didn’t start till 10:30 or 11 and I had driven all day and I was just tired. My husband went back, because he usually stays up later than I do, and he hadn’t driven all day, and he walked through that and he was like, Oh, it was a bit underwhelming, like, you know…

They had told us that you could start it from any point, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case. At any rate, I didn’t go in. And I will have to go back to going.

But you saw it. What did you think of the palace today? What you visit today?

[00:37:55] Elyse Rivin: Oh, it’s magnificent. It’s a very strange, it’s considered to be, I was curious, in the books and online, they talk about it as late gothic. I would have said it’s, I mean, that’s being technical, maybe a little bit early Renaissance. It still got spires, but it’s got some beautiful carved rectangular windows.

You know, it’s interesting because it’s considered to be a house, a mansion. I would have put it in the category of a palace, but a small palace. It’s certainly bigger than what I would call a mansion. It’s magnificent. The stone is magnificent. I’m sure a lot of it has been fixed up. Maybe in the 19th century they did some work on it, you know, because over time, things just fall apart. But it’s absolutely fabulous. It’s not as big as Chambord or any of those huge chateaux because it’s in the city center. It’s right there in the city center.

But it’s beautiful. And the work around the windows, the stonework, and the carvings and everything. I got a kick out of it.

It’s just, it’s like this is the guy’s city house, you know?

The Bourges Cathedral

[00:38:49] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. And the cathedral in Bourges is also remarkable. It’s really very tall, very high.

It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Cathedral. They do have in there, they have people that are friends of the cathedral, it’s an association that they give tours in exchange for a little donation to the organization.

Places to visit in Bourges

[00:39:15] Annie Sargent: It wasn’t fascinating, but I’ve taken a lot of cathedral tours, and so a lot of what she was saying to us seemed like a repeat, but that’s a must see in Bourges, is the cathedral. The Palais Jacques Coeur like you mentioned. They have marshes around Bourges,just outside of the city center. This is a place with lots of water, lots of birds, lots of beautiful things.

There’s a Musée du Berry that you mentioned. It’s a historic 16th century mansion. And what I was just mentioning is Les Nuits Lumières de Bourges, the night lights in Bourges. It’s a night show.I’m sure it’s fine, but I mean, people say it’s fantastic.

My husband didn’t think it was fantastic, but perhaps he was tired, you know?

[00:39:59] Elyse Rivin: Yeah, just had another word about the cathedral. It is interesting to know that it’s a world UNESCO Heritage structure, okay? Because they tend to be super special in some way. And it is very big.

And one of the things apparently, now I did not go into the cathedral, so you went into the cathedral, I had gone into the House of Jacques Coeur. It was accepted as a UNESCO site because of the uniformity of its Gothic construction and the fact that it’s unusual in that it does not have the shape of a cross, it has no transept, it’s just this long, very high, and very, very, very long, enormous cathedral with lots of beautiful carving and detail. I know you have a lot of photos that you took about it.

I thought that was interesting because, I knew that I’d heard of the Cathedral of Bourges, but I wasn’t sure what made it so special.

[00:40:49] Annie Sargent: No,it is very, very nice. And right by the cathedral you have Le Jardin de l’Archêveché, so the Archbishop’s garden. And that’s very nice, they had some dancing going on in there. They had a little cafe, we had a drink. Very pleasant little garden right by the cathedral.

I mean, Bourges has a very pleasant city center. Not massive. You can see it probably in a day, if you have the whole day. If I had had more time, this is what I would have done. You arrive late evening, you have some dinner, you’d go do this lighted path. The next morning, you go visit the cathedral and the Maison Jacques Coeur, and then perhaps you sleep there again if you wish, or you move on to the next place. But you do need a full day to see all of that. A full 24 hours. And it would be good if it included a night, because of the lighted evening thingies.

[00:41:48] Elyse Rivin: I absolutely agree with you. I just want to add one little anecdote. Yesterday I got really, you know how sometimes I get, it’s like my Russian doll thing, once I start reading, I go to another site, to another site, to another site. So, it turns out, this is asmall anecdote about Joan of Arc, but it’s actually, I think it’s kind of fun.

After she managed to get Charles VII crowned, and he sought refuge in Bourges, there was a lull in the fighting. Basically, what happened was that he wanted to get rid of her. You got me my crown, now just leave me alone. She was, you know, she was… kind of special.

[00:42:20] Annie Sargent: Taking too much space.

[00:42:21] Elyse Rivin: She was like… yeah… you know, all she wanted to do was go back and fight, that was her thing.

She wanted to go back and fight the English, you know. Anyway, so she hung out in Bourges for a few months in the winterbetween 1429-1430, waiting to see if she could convince the king to go fight some more.

And the anecdote that I want to tell, because I just love it, because it’s so very modern. Apparently, she was so famous that everybody stopped her.

I mean, she was living in Bourges, everybody wanted her autograph. You know, it’s like, she would walk around the streets in Bourges, and it was the equivalent of everybody wanting her autograph. Women would come up to her and ask for her to bless them, and bless their children. And she couldn’t go anywhere without beingaggressed by these crowds of people, mostly women who were in absolute admiration of this very strange young woman.She was clearly not like the others, you know?

But apparently, it annoyed the hell out of her. All she wanted was to get out of there. It was too much for her. Did you by any chance see if there was a statue of Joan of Arc anywhere?

[00:43:27] Annie Sargent: I didn’t go looking for it. I don’t remember seeing it in the cathedral, which is unusual. I usually look for those. Yeah, it might be there, but I didn’t see it.

[00:43:38] Elyse Rivin: Maybe they just thought, ah, let’s not talk about her anymore.

[00:43:41] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah. yeah.

Culinary Delights from Bourges

[00:43:43] Annie Sargent: And interesting, so just a tiny bit about the food and wine of this area, I did not try the pâté berrichon, but it’s of pâté with pork and veal. It’s wrapped in a pastry and sometimes it includes an egg on top.

[00:43:59] Elyse Rivin: Oh, sounds good.

[00:44:00] Annie Sargent: It’s served as an appetizer. I have not tried it.

Le crottin de Chavignol is a cheese.

I’ve had that. That’s a goat cheese, it’s very nice. And Chavignol is a little village not far from Sancerre. There’s also a kind of a candy called Forestine. That’s from there. I have not tried it, but it’s sugar coated almond paste, so I probably would not like it.

Galette aux pommes de terre, so they have a savory potato cake. They grow potatoes everywhere, like in the north of France, on the drive, we saw potato fields everywhere. And this is one with cream, cheese sometimes, and a golden crust. It’s usually served as a side dish. They have a berry black truffle, so that’s a very different kind of truffle that they find in the area as well.

Of course, Sancerre is not very far, and Sancerre we drove through there, we stopped long enough to buy some wine, not to visit the village, which tells you something about me.

But we did buy, we tasted some wine and bought some Sancerre. It was a Sunday morning, so it was really, really sleepy.

Nothing was happening. It was like, oh, we found a wine shop open. Let’s just do that. And then there’s a Reuilly wine, it’s another wine from that area, not very far from Sancerre.

I thought it was a very nice place to stop for a day. I’m not saying it should be included. But if you want to take a day trip to Sancerre, and to explore the area, it might be a better thing to stay in Bourges because it’s bigger, it has more restaurants.

Oh, we ate at this really nice restaurant called La Pasta, it’s an Italian restaurant. They serve giant pizzas with really, really thin crust. It was delicious. And it was clearly very popular because we showed up right when they opened at 7, and we were not the only ones in line.

So this is one of those that fills up, and it’s very well organized, they serve you quickly, but you have to be there, you know. Expect a bit of a line, it’s very popular, they have a nice little garden and things like that.

And of course, the reason why, well, one of the reasons why we stayed in Bourges is that we wanted to go to Guédelon, the château that’s being built. If you want to explore Guédelon, you might want to stay in Bourges, do one day in Guédelon, one day in Sancerre. When you’re in Sancerre, also go to Chavignol to do the cheese, and that sort of thing.

If you want to take it easy, it’s great. We’ll do another episode about Guédelon. I think it’s ideal for people who speak some French because, I mean, it’s very French, okay? They speak French everywhere, it’s all in French.

[00:46:48] Elyse Rivin: It’s in French.

[00:46:49] Annie Sargent: And the whole point is thatthey give kind of presentation, workshops about the art of building castle, cathedral, whatever.

And it’s all in French. Okay, so…

Bourges overall, I thought was a good choice of a place to stop on my way to further north. And I think it’s, it’s a lovely, lovely town.

[00:47:12] Elyse Rivin: It’s also very nice to get an idea of what the center of France actually is like. It’s not a part that people know about that much. I mean, everybody goes to the coast, to the Atlantic coast, to the Mediterranean. There are places that are well known, but nobody really talks that much about the center of France.

[00:47:30] Annie Sargent: Yeah. And if you go to Guédelon, you’re already in Bourgogne. So that’s a different region, even though it’s not very far. Because Bourgogne kind of extends out, it was a very important area in France.

[00:47:44] Elyse Rivin: Very important area. Whereas the Berrychon which is the region of Berry, which is where Bourges is actually famous for some artists and writers and people like that, but it’s more French people who know about it, I think.

[00:47:57] Annie Sargent: Thank you so much, Elyse. That was very fun, and was fun for me to reminisce. I looked at all through my photos. It was a short stay, but it was a pleasant stay.

And we stayed at a hotel, put the link in the show notes, but it was called Hotel d’Angleterre.

[00:48:10] Elyse Rivin: Ah, you see, you see, you see… they’re still, they’re trying to get the territory back. I told you, you know.

[00:48:17] Annie Sargent: Yes, it was fine. It was like a Best Western, I think. It was fine. We had the problem that to drive the car in, because it’s right in the city center, we had to go through these bollards. What the hotel say is, oh, if you can’t do it, just call us, we’ll lower the bollards for you.

They can do it because it’s close enough to the hotel. They can actually use the remote control out of the door of the hotel to lower the bollards for you. But in my case, it lowered itself. I pulled up, it lowered itself, I drove in, parked, it was fine.

[00:48:47] Elyse Rivin: It’s ’cause they knew it was you.

[00:48:48] Annie Sargent: They knew I was coming. I’m special. I’m really special.

Merci beaucoup, Elyse. Au revoir.

[00:48:54] Elyse Rivin: Bye.

Thank you Patrons

[00:49:02] Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.

Although I don’t have any new patrons to welcome this week, I’m incredibly grateful for the continued support from all of you.

Your backing makes it possible for me to keep creating content that I’m passionate about and that I know you enjoy as well. Would you join them too? You can do that for as little as 2$ per month.

And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/ElysArt.

Planning a trip to France?

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These tours lead you to the best of Paris, covering the Eiffel Tower, Le Marais, Montmartre, Latin Quarter, Ile de la Cite and Saint Germain des Prés, and a food themed tour around Les Halles as well. You can read hundreds of reviews of my tours by going to JoinUsinFrance.com/VMR. VMR stands for VoiceMap Reviews.

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Tips for Americans visiting France

[00:51:25] Annie Sargent: All right, here’s some tips for Americans visiting France, especially those who wish to move to France or Paris someday. Here are some ways you can fit in better, and okay, I’m going to maybe say some things that you don’t want to hear, but here you go.

Number 1. Do not try to eat at 6:30pm. It will not go well. You won’t find very many places. Wait till 7:30pm, when we all eat.

Number 2. Drink your beer in a glass. Yes, drinking a beer out of the can, or out of the glass bottle, for some reason, that’s not right. You’re supposed to put it in a glass.

Number 3. Drink your wine without endlessly discussing provenance and cépage with the waiter. You can discuss that between yourselves, but the waiter doesn’t want to know. He just wants you to give him a order. For instance, you could say, I would like a dry white, or I would like a sweet white, or I would like a red from the south of France, or a red from, I don’t know, the Loire Valley, or something like this, you know?

Number 4. Be polite and use your ‘Bonjour’ liberally. You should not utter a word to anyone before you’ve said ‘Bonjour’. We’re quirky that way.

Number 5. Speaking of liberally, dropping a hint that you’re not in the America Uber Alles camp may be advantageous to you. I think you get my drift.

Number 6. Be patient because things take more time than you’re used to. In France, we’re often not in a big hurry, okay? Take your time, just expect that you might have to wait a little bit.

Number 7. Learn French and use it, even if it’s not perfect, just say however much French you can say, do it with a smile and you’ll see everything will go well.

Number 8. Continue to be friendly and cheerful. Don’t ever let a big city like Paris rip that out of you. Even if you move there and things are going very slowly and you’re not sure how to speed things up, be friendly and cheerful. That’s a wonderful North American trait that you never want to lose.

Number 9. Opulence and consumerism are not that big in France. Be frugal if you can, be frugal, and definitely if you’re not frugal, don’t show off. Do not show off.

Number 10. Adjust your voice level to that of what you see other people do around you in public. If nobody’s talking at the top of their lungs, you probably shouldn’t either.

You know, read the room kind of advice here.

Number 11. If you want to blend in, and this matters a great deal to people, buy your clothes in France. That’s how it works. You buy local things and somehow, poof, you look like a French person.

Number 12. Don’t wear your religion, if any, on your sleeve. Keep it to yourself. French people will not ask you what religion you are, and you shouldn’t ask them either. Now, if it comes up, fine. But if it doesn’t, don’t bring it up.

Number 13. Patronize local, and small businesses, and talk to people. Talking to people is an excellent way to do just about anything. And if you need some help, ask for some help. French people are very happy to help.

Number 14. If you order steak, try it rare. I know some people are not going to want to do this, but very, very cooked steak doesn’t taste very good. I’m sorry. Especially in France. We don’t have very good beef to begin with, so if you overcook it, you might as well not order beef. This is my opinion.

Number 15. You can make genuine friends in France, but it’ll take time. Just like waiting for the plumber. It takes time. Making genuine friends in France, it takes time, but once they’re your friends, they’re your friends forever.

Number 16. Don’t go telling French people how a good dose of capitalism and winner take all can fix everything.

Yes, that’s a bit of politics here, but yes, we don’t go for that sort of thing, typically. It’s not going to make you any friends, let’s put it that way.

Number 17. Do not put your feet up on a table or a seat in front of you, either in someone’s home or in public transportation. This is a big no-no in France.

In public transportation, I’ve known people who said their legs were killing them because they had been walking and standing all day. And all they did is put their leg up in the seat in front of them. And they got a fine. Yes, that’s because we don’t like that. Don’t do it. Just don’t do it.

And number 18, the last one, and this is for people who really, really want to be strict, to conform to local mores very strictly. Don’t put your hands under the table at dinner. Your hands should always be in plain sight, with your wrists on the table and not your hands under the table. That’s how we were raised. I guess people don’t pay too much attention to that anymore.

But if you really, really care, that’s something you can look for.

My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan who produced the transcripts.

Next week on the podcast

[00:56:50] Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode about the Auvergne with André Manns. We haven’t talked about the Auvergne very much. It is such a beautiful, wonderful part of France.

Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together.

Au revoir.

Copyright

[00:57:08] Annie Sargent: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and Copyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

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Transcript for Episode 517: Exploring Bourges: A Hidden French Gem