50 HORSE-RACING IN FRANCE 



CHAPTER ni. 



THE FIRST STRUGGLES. 



When the French Jockey Club commenced their 

 patriotic and Herculean task in 1833 it may be said that, 

 save here and there in the provinces perhaps (as in the 

 North at Le Pin, where there had been racing ' off and 

 on ' since 1805, and at Dieppe, where Count de Tocque- 

 ville, as has already been mentioned, had a private 

 ' hippodrome ' of his own, and, it may be, at Pompa- 

 dour, where the Administration des Haras had for 

 many years a breeding stud, at Tarbes, and at other 

 places in the South), there were in France no race- 

 courses on which a conscientious owner could invite a 

 respectable horse to risk his limbs in a serious race, or 

 any human jockey to expose his flesh and blood and 

 bones (especially his collar bone) to what that flesh and 

 blood would have to bear. There had been steeple- 

 chasing at Croix de Berny as early as 1832, and at La 

 Marche there were regular steeple- chases not long 

 afterwards ; and, as we have seen, there had been all 

 kinds of horse-racing at odd times (before and after 

 1783), whether at Vincennes or at Fontainebleau or 

 elsewhere ; but, according to excellent authority, the 

 ' hippodrome ' of Chantilly, when it was first laid out 

 (1833-34), was ' unique in France.' In the Champ de 

 Mars and at Satory-Versailles, the chief places of racing 



