ities. The Cathedrals, as
the most important buildings and the most conspicuous, were strongly
fortified, both to protect their contents and to serve as strongholds
for the citizens in case of need. In these churches, therefore,
architecture assumed its most utilitarian form and buildings are real
fortifications, with battlemented walls, strong and heavy towers, and
small windows, and are provided with the other devices of Romanesque
architecture of a purely military type."

[Illustration: "FORTIFIED GOTHIC BUILT IN BRICK."--ALBI.]

"Time has dealt hardly with them. The kingly power, being entrenched in
Paris, developed from the Isle de France. The wealth that once enriched
the fertile lands of the South moved northwards, and the great
commercial cities of the North became the most important centres of
activity. Then the southern towns began to decline," and the
buildings which remain to represent most perfectly the "Church-Fortress"
are not those of Provence, which are "patched" and "restored," but those
of Languedoc, Agde, and Maguelonne, and Elne of the near-by country of
Rousillon.

[Illustration: "A CHURCH FORTRESS."--MAGUELONNE.]

[Sidenote: Gascony.]

Gascony, the last of the southern provinces and the farthest from Rome,
had great prosperity under Imperial dominion. Many patricians emigrated
there, roads were built, commerce flourished, and as in Provence and
Languedoc, towns grew into large and well-established cities.
Christianity made a comparatively early conquest of the province; and
at the beginning of the IV century, eleven suffragan Bishoprics had been
established under the Archbishopric of Eauze. Gascony has many old
Cathedral cities, and has had many ancient Cathedrals; but after the
fall of the Roman Empire in the V century, a series of wars began which
destroyed not only the Christian architecture, but almost every trace of
Roman wealth and culture. Little towers remain, supposed shrines of
Mercury, protector of commerce and travel; pieces of statues are found;
but the Temples, the Amphitheatres, the Forums, have disappeared, and
even more completely, the rude Christian churches of that early period.

Although the province has no Mediterranean coast and could not be
molested by the marauders of that busy sea, it lay directly upon the
route of armies between France and Spain; and it is no "gasconading" to
say that it was for centuries one of the greatest battle-fields of the
South. Vandals, V