Château Gaillard

“ The road we traverse is that which appears so conspicuously in Turner's great painting of the Chateau-Gaillard. It crosses the bridge close under the towering chalk cliffs where the ruin stands so boldly. There is a road that follows the right bank of the river close to the railway, and it is from there that one of the strangest views of the castle is to be obtained. You may see it thrown up by a blaze of sunlight against the grassy heights behind that are all dark beneath the shadow of a cloud. ”

“ In landscape, as in his architectural work, Webster sets his theme upon the plate with fine skill of arrangement and with exquisite draughtsmanship. These two plates, Château Gaillard and La Route de Louviers, are exhilarating in their feeling of sunshine, and they please by their absolute simplicity of statement. They are honest, and without artifice. ”

“ I doubt, however, whether we should have travelled hither, had we not been attracted by the celebrity of the castle, called Château Gaillard, erected by Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in the immediate vicinity of Le Petit Andelys.—Our guide, a sturdy old dame, remonstrated strongly against our walking so far to look at a mere heap of stones, nothing comparable to the fine statue of Clotilda, of which, if we would but have a little patience, we might still procure a sight.—Our expectations respecting the castle were more than answered. ”

“ The keep cannot be ascended without difficulty. We ventured to scale it; and we were fully repaid for our labor by the prospect which we gained. The Seine, full of green willowy islands, flows beneath the rock in large lazy windings: the peninsula below is flat, fertile, and well wooded: on the opposite shores, the fantastic chalky cliffs rise boldly, crowned with dark forests.
I have already once had occasion to allude to the memorable strife occasioned by the erection of Château Gaillard, which its royal founder is reported to have so named by way of mockery. ”

“ During the twelfth century, consequently, castle architecture underwent a remarkable transformation. Richard the Lion Hearted built Château Gaillard in Normandy. His mighty rival, Philip Augustus, built the famous Louvre to dominate Paris, and erected other new-style castles with cylindrical towers at Montargis, Poissy, Dourges, and elsewhere. Already by 1220 the plans are being drawn for a great castle at Coucy (built between 1223 and 1230) which is to be almost a model for all subsequent fortress builders, until the advent of gunpowder. ”

“ An artist will fall in love with the ancient mill, picturesquely planted on the river’s bank; and, if it were not that the proudly set Château Gaillard, to be seen in the distance, draws one to it in a magnetic and inexpressible fashion, many pages of his sketch-book would undoubtedly reproduce some of the charm of the environment of this otherwise unattractive village, which it may be said possesses no accommodation for the traveller save the roadside tavern.
The road to Les Andelys runs from St. Pierre, by the left bank of the Seine, for nearly a dozen kilometres. ”

“ Château-Gaillard is composed of two principal parts, the castle proper and the outwork: the one covering the whole head of the promontory, the other occupying the only level ground, being the root of the ridge, from which the fortress could be attacked on equal terms. ”

“ It seldom happens that the military buildings of the middle ages have such a talus or slope, on the exterior face, agreeing with the principles of modern fortification; and it is difficult to guess why the architect of Château Gaillard thought fit to vary from the established model of his age. The masonry is regular and good. The pointed windows are evidently insertions of a period long subsequent to the original erection. ”

“ The stone machicolations built by Richard round his keep of Chateau Gaillard are of an unusual type, which was only rarely imitated. [1186] But from this time wooden hurdicia became universal, to judge from the numerous orders for timber for hoarding castles and town walls in the Close Rolls of the first half of the 13th century. Towards the middle of the 13th century stone brackets for the support of wooden hurdicia began to be used; they may still be seen in the great keep of Coucy, which was begun in 1230. ”

“ Where the curtain was so well defended as in these two castles, a double entrance was a source of strength rather than weakness. The problem for the enemy was how to distribute his forces, so as to keep the whole enceinte under observation. To concentrate an attack upon one gateway was to run the risk of being outflanked and taken in the rear by a sortie from the other. Strong as Château-Gaillard and other castles of the transition had been, they had simply met the prospect of attack with successive lines of defence. ”

“ At Château sur Epte, in Normandy, there are two mounds, one within and one forming part of the enclosure. At York and Canterbury are mounds just within the city walls. In modern fortifications they are called Cavaliers. There is one in the citadel of Antwerp. ↑ The shell or remains of it are seen at Château-Gaillard, built by Richard I., Oxford, Cardiff, Durham, Clifford's tower at York, Lincoln, Clave, Tamworth, Carisbrook. ↑ Bernard's castle includes seven acres. ”

“ The work took three days and nights: every man who put three stones into the hollow was promised a penny.82 Philip Augustus in February 1203-4 began his operations upon Château-Gaillard by filling the ditch between the outer ward and his lines, while his catapults played upon the masonry from a distance and protected the workers between them and the wall.83
Bore protected by mantlets
While the battering-ram, the bore, and the mine threatened the stability of the walls, parties of the besiegers attempted to force an entry into the stronghold. ”

“ To sum up the chateau architecture, and, to be comprehensive, all mediæval and Renaissance architecture in France, we may say that it stands as something distinctly national, something that has absorbed much of the best of other lands but which has been fused with the ingenious daring of the Gaul into a style which later went abroad to all nations of the globe as something distinctly French. ”

“ The castle stands perched (say rather poised, like St. Michael the archangel in Italian pictures) on a solitary stack or crag of rock, looking down on every side upon its own rich vineyards. Chestnuts line the glens; the valley of the Etsch spreads below like a picture.
The vineyards alone make a splendid estate, by the way; they produce a delicious red wine, which is exported to Bordeaux, and there bottled and sold as a vintage claret under the name of Chateau Monnivet. Charles revelled in the idea of growing his own wines. ”

“ Whether we admire most the structure of Geoffrey Grise-Gonelle, the elegant edifice of the fifteenth century, or the additions of Charles VII., Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., or Henri III., we must conclude that to know this conglomerate structure intimately one must actually live with it. Nowhere in France—perhaps in no country—is there a château that suggests so stupendously the story of its past. ”

“ On proceeding thither, we find an elegant château with a charming terraced garden, lying at the very foot of the vine-clad slopes, and on the opposite side of the road some large celliers where wine in wood is stored, and where the cuvées of the firm, consisting usually of upwards of 50,000 gallons each, are made in a vat of gigantic proportions, furnished with a raised platform at one end for the accommodation of the workman who agitates the customary paddles. ”

“ Its chief charm to me is its obscurity; no curiosity-hunter or ordinary tourist has ever frightened away the dryads from its chestnut groves or the naiads from its fresh streams. Even a flitting poet has scarcely ever betrayed its rural mysteries. My château has none of the grandeur that you have, perhaps, ascribed to it. Picture to yourself a pretty country-house, lightly set on a hill-top, and pensively overlooking the Creuse flowing at its feet under an arbor of alder-bushes and flowering ash. ”

“ My husband and several of the owners of large estates gave work to many with their regular "coupe" of wood, but that only lasts a short time, and the men who are willing to work but can find nothing drift naturally into cafés and billiard saloons, where they read cheap bad papers and talk politics of the wildest description.
We found our château very well situated on the top of a hill, a good avenue leading up to the gate, a pretty little park with fine trees at the back, the tower of the village church just visible through the trees at the end of the central alley. ”

“ The wonderful and unceasing whirl and confusion in the narrow, crowded streets, through which they made their way slowly, and not without difficulty, perplexed and distracted him, accustomed as he had been all his life to the vast solitude of the Landes, and the deathly stillness that reigned almost unbroken in his own desolate old château ”

“ The deep grooves upon its facade betrayed the former existence of a draw-bridge, rendered unnecessary now by the filling up of the moat, while the towers were draped for more than half their height with a most luxuriant growth of ivy, whose deep, rich green contrasted happily with the ancient gray walls.
A traveller, seeing from afar the steep pointed roof and lofty towers standing out against the sky, above the furze and heather that crowned the hill-top, would have pronounced it a rather imposing château—the residence probably of some provincial magnate ”

“ Château de Saumur
"Saumur est, ma foi! une jolie ville," said a traveller one day at a table d'hôte at Tours. And so indeed it is. Its quays and its squares lend an air of gaiety to its proud old hôtel de ville and its grim château. Old habitations, commodious modern houses, frowning machicolations, church spires, grand hotels, innumerable cafés, and much military, all combine in a blend of fascinating interest that one usually finds only in a great metropolis.
The chief attraction is unquestionably the old château. ”

“ For forty years he was the intimate friend of Malesherbes, whose life (1805) he wrote. He died at St Firmin, near Chantilly, on the 13th of February 1806. Gaillard is painstaking and impartial in his statement of facts, and his style is correct and elegant, but the unity of his narrative is somewhat destroyed by digressions, and by his method of treating war, politics, civil administration, and ecclesiastical affairs under separate heads. ”

“ We turned off sharply to the left and at the end of a long avenue saw the house, half hidden by the trees. The entrance through a low archway, flanked on each side by high round towers covered with ivy, is most picturesque. The château is built around three sides of a square court-yard, the other side looking straight over broad green meadows ending in a background of wood. A moat runs almost all around the house—a border of salvias making a belt of colour which is most effective. We found the family—Marquis and Marquise de Lasteyrie and their two sons—waiting at the hall door. ”

“ A long stretch of solid wall is still there, and some of the old towers are converted into modern dwellings. It looked out of place to see ordinary lace curtains tied back with a ribbon and pots of red geraniums in the high narrow windows, when one thought of the rough grim soldiers armed to the teeth who have stood for hours in those same windows watching anxiously for the first glimpse of an armed band appearing at the edge of the meadows. The château must have been a fine feudal fortress in its time and has sheltered many great personages. ”

“ We all started back to the house up the steep, muddy path, some of the men with us leading their horses, some riding round by Marolles to give orders to the breaks and various carriages to come to the château. The big gates were open, Hubert there to arrange at once for the accommodation of so many horses and equipages, and the billiard and dining-rooms, with great wood-fires, looking most comfortable. The chasseurs begged not to come into the drawing-room, as they were covered with mud, so they brushed off what they could in the hall, and we went at once to the goûter. ”

“ Despite this lack of regularity, or rather because of it, it is a fascinating structure; at least, one does not see it all at a single glance; there is an opportunity for choice and one is always on the lookout for something one has not seen.
This château, with which I was not familiar, for it is twenty leagues from town, pleased me immensely at first sight, and I was extremely grateful to Rosette for conceiving the admirable idea of selecting such a nest for our love. ”

“ We come to two ranges of buildings standing among fields, buildings which have greatly gone down in the world, but which proclaim themselves as the remains of a château in the later French sense, or perhaps only of its outhouses. The modern château does indeed often enough stand on the site of the ancient castle; but here were no signs whatever of mound or ditch, though we ran into several fields to look for them. And, though we were certainly on higher ground than the church and village, there was nothing at all to suggest why the name of the place should have been called Hauteville. ”

“ The broad green alleys of the park, with the trees just changing a little, were quite charming. Our station was Verneuil l'Etang, a quiet little country station dumped down in the middle of the fields, and a drive of about fifty minutes brought us to the château. The country is not at all pretty, always the same thing—great cultivated fields stretching off on each side of the road—every now and then a little wood or clump of trees. One does not see the château from the high road. ”