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 hang him here!" The poor man's life was saved by the
national guard, who took him to prison on pretext of drawing up his
indictment. The general in command only entered the town by virtue of a
compromise made with the vine-growers; and it needed some courage to go
among them. At the moment when he showed himself at the hotel-de-ville,
a man from the faubourg de Rome slung a "volant" round his neck (the
"volant" is a huge pruning-hook fastened to a pole, with which they trim
trees) crying out, "No more clerks, or there's an end to compromise!"
The fellow would have taken off that honored head, left untouched by
sixteen years of war, had it not been for the hasty intervention of one
of the leaders of the revolt, to whom a promise had been made that _the
chambers should be asked to suppress the excisemen_.

In the fourteenth century, Issoudun still had sixteen or seventeen
thousand inhabitants, remains of a population double that number in the
time of Rigord. Charles VII. possessed a mansion which still exists, and
was known, as late as the eighteenth century, as the Maison du Roi. This
town, th