Excerpt from The Hill-Towns of France Two people never see a thing from exactly the same angle, nor in describing it present the same viewpoint; so out of something old we are constantly getting something new. France has been pictured in a variety of ways, as a whole, in sections, or by dealing with some specific subject such as its cathedrals, its chateaux, its literary landmarks. Yet as far as I know, France has never been approached from the viewpoint of its hill-towns. These hill-towns are of four distinct types: first, the large town, commanded and protected by the turrets and massive towers of its walls and citadel; second, the feudal castle, the residence of some great lord about whose walls a straggling town has grown up; third, the fortified town, communal in character, which, governed by no over-lord and possessed of no castle, yet protects itself from invasion by fortifying its houses and its churches also; fourth, the monastic hill-town, its defences built primarily to defend a shrine. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.