Chap. VI.
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more experienced the same fate. In 1412, where the present bridge of Notre Dame nowstands, the first of stone was constructed at Paris ; this was soon carried away, andhouses having been built upon it, the magistrates, through whose bad management theaccident had occurred, were condemned to reimburse the proprietors, and not being ableto do so, died in prison. The government, fearing a recurrence, sent for Jocondi, ofVerona, from Italy , whose construction of the Ponte Corvo had gained him great credit.This architect, who was employed after the death of Bramante , conjointly with Raphael and Julien de Saint Paul at St. Peter’s, built the bridge of Notre Dame as it now exists.About sixty years afterwards, the Pont Neuf was begun, and during the interim those ofOhatellereau and Toulouse . The breadth of these bridges is very considerable comparedwith those which preceded them; they appear to have been the first in which fiat archeswere employed, and to have been built and ornamented with considerable attention.
From the completion of the Pont Neuf , in 1604, to 1656, the Pont St. Michel, HotelDieu, Pont au Change, Pont Marie, and La Tournelle, were built. Fran£ois Blondelgave the designs for die Pont da Saintes in 1666, and Frere Roman, the architect of thebridge of Maestricht , was invited to Paris by Louis XIV. in 1683, to commence one ofthe piers of the Bridge of the Tuilleries , which was then in progress after forty years’delay ; from this period to that of the bridge at Blois , including those built by Mansard at the latter end of the reign of Louis XIV. , no considerable work of this kind was under-taken.
Before the time of Louis XIV . there was but little commerce, and transport wasmostly effected by mules, which accounts for the narrowness of the bridges, althoughmany were of great length ; the foundations are seldom much deeper than the bed of theriver, and those of Chalons and Macon are built on piles 5 feet long, and many so con-structed have given way; but those that still remain form a very solid mass, occasioned bythe hardness of the cement: when required to be enlarged, the starlings may be used asfoundations for the new constructions, which is always more economical and safer thanbuilding in a new situation.
After the establishment of the Fonts et Chaussees, the designs for bridges were madeby the engineers attached to it, and submitted to the examination of a board composedprincipally of the inspectors-general and some of the divisional inspectors, who, to theknowledge acquired by study, added that which is the fruit of experience. The bridgesof the last century are, consequently, much more carefully constructed than those of thepreceding, and since this epoch the art has made rapid strides.
The first in order of time is the bridge of Blois , built in 1720, by Pitrou, after thedesigns of Gabriel, the royal architect and chief engineer of the Fonts et Chaussees, inwhich Pitrou first proposed his trussed centres for great arches. These arches arc ellip-tical, a form which has since been frequently adopted, as in the bridges of Tours, Moulins ,and Saumur , built nearly at the same time over the Loire and the Allier . The completionof the last, in 1764, is the epoch of the introduction of the method of founding by cais-soons ; in France its application to bridges was due, as we have seen, to Belie, and Cessart was the first to practise it.
'Ihe bridge of Neuilly , begun in 1768, by Perronet , united the effect produced by greatartists by simple decoration with all that perfection of execution of which this kind ofwork is capable. A short time after its construction, the arch of a bridge received theform of a segment, whose springing is nearly level with high water. The bridge Fauchard,projected by Voglie, and built by Limay ; the bridge of Pesmes, built in 1772, by Ber-trand ; that of St. Maxence, built in 1784, by Perronet , afforded examples of this kind ofconstruction, which was followed by several other engineers. In 1787, Perronet beganthe Pont de la Concorde at Paris , in which he reduced the thickness of the piers and archesto less than had ever been done.
The bridges hitherto erected in France may be divided into two sections. The first, aswe have seen, comprised those constructed from the twelfth to the end of the fifteenthcenturies, all of which are founded on rubble work at but little depth, are extremelynarrow, and although some are very long, they have all the traces of great economy : theother comprises the bridges from the beginning of the sixteenth to that of the eighteenthcentury, when stone bridges were erected, in the interior of towns, of greater width andsuperior construction and decoration. The third section comprises all bridges from theestablishment of {he Fonts et Chaussees to the present time.
Bridge of Avignon , on the Rhone -This has been already mentioned as the second bridge
built in France after the fall of the Roman empire, and constructed by the associationknown by the name of “ Brothers of the Bridge,” in consequence, according to tradition, ofa miracle performed by Saint Benezet . It was begun in 1177, and was not entirely com-pleted till 1187, although it was rendered passable in 1185.
At Avignon the Rhone divides and forms an island, and it appears that there were atfirst two separate bridges over the two arms, in a direction nearly perpendicular to thecurrent of the river; one of five and the other eight arches : they were then united by