Chapter XII: Part 12

In 1204, we see Philip Augustus reappear in Touraine. In consequence of the confiscation pronounced against John Lackland, the King of France himself came to take possession of the principal places and towns in the province. Tours opened her gates at the first summons. Loches did not show herself so obliging. The castle was defended by Girard d’Athée and other lords devoted to the interests of England.

It was necessary to lay a regular siege. After a year of struggle and toil, the place was forced to capitulate on account of the failure of provisions and ammunition. Philip Augustus gave it in recompense to Dreux de Mello, constable of France, a brave knight, celebrated for his exploits in France and Palestine, whither he had accompanied the King. Afterwards this gift was bought back by St. Louis, by an act dated December, 1249, on the banks of the Nile in Egypt.

On returning to France, St. Louis spent several days at Loches. In 1301 and 1307, Philippe le Bel rested eight days at the castle of Loches on his way to talk to Pope Clement V. about the affair of the Templars. Half a century later, John II. arrived at Loches at the head of the flower of French chivalry on his way to Poictiers to give battle to the Black Prince. Fortune appeared to be smiling upon him and victory seemed to be assured; but instead of accepting the advantageous propositions made by his adversary, he wanted to crush the army of the foe. He then fell victim to one of those disasters that leave a long and sad echo in history. The evils that overwhelmed France were horrible. Anarchy was complete, and reigned in every rank of the hierarchy. The English retook Loches, and for more than half-a-century the foreigner trampled on and desolated our provinces.

At length came Charles VII. When he first visited Loches, he was still only the King of Bourges. A poor suite followed him; but he was accompanied by Marie d’Anjou, a princess of rare prudence and a courage proof against everything. This virtuous queen was France’s good genius. In spite of the miseries of the time, she never despaired of her country. Her confidence was not deceived: Joan of Arc soon accomplished her glorious mission: France was saved.

In 1436, Charles VII. reappeared at Loches; but this time the queen was not alone. In her company was a young girl whose timidity seemed to recommend her, but whose position was no mystery to anybody: she was Agnes Sorel, born in the village of Fromenteau in Touraine. Charles VII. gave her the castle of Beauté in Champagne, it is said, so that she might be _Dame de Beauté_ by title as well as in reality. Agnes possessed a small house at Beaulieu where she sometimes stayed to hide herself from the eyes of the courtiers. So the King had the tower built at the Castle of Loches that still bears the name of Agnes Sorel. This tower stands in a delightful spot: it commands the smiling vale of the Indre, and from it the view embraces a charming panorama. The eye is arrested by a curtain of verdure formed by the ancient oaks of the forest and then wanders with pleasure over the freshest meadows imaginable. Agnes Sorel is in the choir of the church at Loches. Her white marble tomb, with her statue also of white marble, the feet resting on two little lambs and hands clasped, is now to be seen in the castle tower that bears her name.

The strong position of the castle of Loches gained for it at an early date the sad honour of becoming a state prison. Behind its beautiful and solid walls, great lords came to expiate their ambitious intrigues, or the simple misfortune of having displeased those more powerful than themselves. Geoffroy de Saint-Aignan was shut up here and strangled in the Eleventh Century; Thibault, Count of Tours, suffered the severest treatment here after his defeat at Nouy; and John, Duke of Alençon, was cast into a deep cell here by order of Charles VII. for having aided an ungrateful son in his attempts at rebellion, a son who was always ready to foment trouble in the realm. But it was Louis XI. who made the most frequent use of the Loches cells.

Charles VIII. often inhabited the castle during his early youth. Charlotte of Savoy, his mother, was treated in it almost like a prisoner by the suspicious Louis XI., who never exhibited a very lively friendship for his wife. On his accession, Charles did not forget Loches; he began the great tower that was completed by his successor, and he took his graceful wife, Anne of Brittany, thither. Louis XII. constructed the building that connects the round with the square tower. In this is found the low room in which Louis le More was confined in 1505. The Duke of Milan spent several years in his prison at Loches, in a truly sinister cell.

The soldier became an artist, and on the sombre walls of his cell he laid a strange and original composition, full of grandeur and character. Over the chimney-piece he placed his portrait, more than life size, with casque on head as on the day of battle, and vizor raised. The energetic features of this profile, the aquiline nose, prominent chin and upper lip curled in a disdainful smile, depict for us the entire man. Between the lines _pens_ are ranged, punning allusions to the pains he suffered. The whole cell is decorated in three colours, yellow ochre, red brown and almost blue black, combined with the white of the walls. It was with this work that Sforza occupied the interminable hours of his solitude. Travellers view these paintings with curiosity as if to probe the secret thoughts that filled the bitter heart of the dethroned prince. One cannot help shuddering at the thought that the unfortunate Duke of Milan lived here for long years, shut up in this _in pace_ by the good Louis XII. However, Ludovic did not remain forever in this cell. Towards the last, the King permitted him to occupy the upper apartments of the palace under surveillance of some Scottish soldiers.

Another noted prisoner deserves mention. John, lord of Saint Vallier, father of Diana of Poictiers, allowed himself to be drawn into the conspiracy of the Duke of Bourbon. The plot was revealed by Louis de Brézé, who had no idea that he was implicating his father-in-law. Saint Vallier was arrested and imprisoned in the Castle of Loches. From his prison, September 19, 1523, he wrote touching letters to his children begging them to appeal to the King in his favour. But Francis I. showed himself hard and impenetrable. The guilty man was condemned and led to the Place de Grève, more dead than alive, to be decapitated. At the moment when the sentence was about to be carried out, an archer came from the King, bringing, not a pardon, but a commutation. The unfortunate man, whose hair had turned white in a night, was so affected by the preparation for his death that he almost lost his reason. Ever afterwards he was afflicted with a nervous trembling, accompanied by fever, which became known as the _fever of St. Vallier_.

By a singular irony of fate, splendid _fêtes_ were held in this same castle, whither so many wretches came to groan. Thirty years had not elapsed since the Duke of Milan had breathed his last sigh, when the conqueror of Pavia was received at Loches by him who there had lost “all but honour.” Francis I., like a generous prince, on this occasion displayed extreme magnificence: he came to meet his rival, December 12, 1539, accompanied by his queen, Eleanor, and followed by his whole court. The entertainments were numerous and splendid, and only ended when the Emperor had arrived on the frontier of the Low Countries.

The splendour of _fêtes_ shone anew at Loches in 1559, when Henri II. and Catherine de’Medici passed through ten years afterwards; Henri III., while still the Dauphin, stayed there for several days, at the moment when he was going to take his place at the head of the army concentrated in the environs, on the eve of the victory of Moncontour. Here also were seen Charles IX., Henri IV. and Marie de’Medici. The latter was a fugitive, taking refuge here for a few moments after leaving the Castle of Blois, whence she had succeeded in escaping. From that epoch, silence has invaded the vast halls and towers, the terraces and gardens. Nothing has interrupted it except the savage cries of the Revolution. To-day the palace of the Kings, discrowned and almost deserted, keeps only the memory of magnificence gone forever.

THE PALACE OF BLENHEIM

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The park gate of Blenheim stands close to the end of the village street of Woodstock. Immediately on passing through its portals, we saw the stately palace in the distance, but made a wide circuit of the park before approaching it. This noble park contains three thousand acres of land, and is fourteen miles in circumference. Having been, in part, a royal domain before it was granted to the Marlborough family, it contains many trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has doubtless been the haunt of game and deer for centuries. We saw pheasants in abundance, feeding in the open lawns and glades; and the stags tossed their antlers and bounded away, not affrighted, but only shy and gamesome, as we drove by. It is a magnificent pleasure-ground, not too tamely kept, nor rigidly subjected within rule, but vast enough to have lapsed back into nature again, after all the pains that the landscape-gardeners of Queen Anne’s time bestowed on it, when the domain of Blenheim was scientifically laid out. The great, knotted slanting trunks of the old oaks do not now look as if man had much intermeddled with their growth and postures. The trees of later date, that were set out in the Great Duke’s time, are arranged on the plan of the order of battle in which the illustrious commander ranked his troops at Blenheim; but the ground covered is so extensive, and the trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator is not disagreeably conscious of their standing in military array, as if Orpheus had summoned them together by beat of drum. The effect must have been very formal a hundred and fifty years ago, but has ceased to be so,--although the trees, I presume, have kept their ranks with even more fidelity than Marlborough’s veteran’s did.

After driving a good way, we came to a battlemented tower and adjoining house, which used to be the residence of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who held charge of the property for the King before the Duke of Marlborough possessed it. The keeper opened the door for us, and in the entrance hall we found various things that had to do with the chase and woodland sports. We mounted the staircase, through several stories, up to the top of the tower, whence there was a view of the spires of Oxford, and of points much farther off,--very indistinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the misty distances of England. Returning to the ground-floor, we were ushered into the room in which died Wilmot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who was Ranger of the Park in Charles’s time. It is a low and bare little room, with a window in front, and a smaller one behind; and in the contiguous entrance-room there are the remains of an old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which, perhaps, Rochester may have made the penitent end that Bishop Burnet attributes to him. I hardly know what it is, in this poor fellow’s character, which affects us with greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other profligates of his day, who seem to have been neither better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that he had a human heart which never quite died out of him, and the warmth of which is still faintly perceptible amid the dissolute trash which he left behind.

Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all the seclusion of cultivated wilderness beneath to ramble in. There being no such possibility, we drove on, catching glimpses of the palace in new points of view, and by and by came to Rosamond’s Well. The particular tradition that connects Fair Rosamond with it is not now in my memory; but if Rosamond ever lived and loved, and ever had her abode in the maze of Woodstock, it way well be believed that she and Henry sometimes sat beside this spring. It gushes out from a bank, through some old stone-work, and dashes its little cascade (about as abundant as one might turn out of a large pitcher) into a pool whence it steals away towards the lake, which is not far removed.

Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of the quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic front of the palace, with its two projecting wings. We ascended the lofty steps of the portal, and were admitted into the entrance-hall, the height of which, from floor to ceiling, is not much less than seventy feet, being the entire elevation of the edifice. The hall is lighted by windows in the upper story, and it being a clear bright day, was very radiant with lofty sunshine, amid which a swallow was flitting to and fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir James Thornhill in some allegorical design (doubtless commemorative of Marlborough’s victories) the purport of which I did not take the trouble to make out,--contenting myself with the general effect, which was most splendidly and effectively ornamental.

We were guided through the show-rooms by a very civil person, who allowed us to take pretty much our own time in looking at the pictures. The collection is exceedingly valuable,--many of these works of Art having been presented to the Grand Duke by the crowned heads of England or the Continent. One room was all aglow with pictures by Rubens; and there were works of Raphael, and many other famous painters, any one of which would be sufficient to illustrate the meanest house that might contain it. I remember none of them, however (not being in a picture-seeing mood), so well as Vandyck’s large and familiar picture of Charles I. on horseback, with a figure and face of melancholy dignity such as never by any other hand was put on canvas.

After passing through the first suite of rooms, we were conducted through a corresponding suite on the opposite side of the entrance-hall. These latter apartments are most richly adorned with tapestries, wrought and presented to the first Duke by a sisterhood of Flemish nuns; they look like great, glowing pictures, and completely cover the walls of the rooms. The designs purport to represent the Duke’s battles and sieges; and everywhere we see the hero himself, as large as life, and as gorgeous in scarlet and gold as the holy sisters could make him, with a three-cornered hat and flowing wig, reining in his horse, and extending his leading-staff in the attitude of command. Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there can never have been anything more magnificent than these tapestries; and, considered as works of Art, they have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of ten.

One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the library, a most noble room, with a vast perspective length from end to end.

The next business was to see the private gardens. An old Scotch under-gardener admitted us and led the way, and seemed to have a fair prospect of earning the fee all by himself; but by and by another respectable Scotchman made his appearance and took us in charge, proving to be the head-gardener in person. He was extremely intelligent and agreeable, talking both scientifically and lovingly about trees and plants, of which there is every variety capable of English cultivation. Positively, the Garden of Eden cannot have been more beautiful than this private garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred acres, and by the artificial circumlocution of the paths, and the undulations, and the skilfully interposed clumps of trees, is made to appear limitless. The sylvan delights of a whole country are compressed into this space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to the concoction of an ounce of precious attar. The world within that garden-fence is not the same weary and dusty world with which we outside mortals are conversant; it is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious Nature; and the Great Mother lends herself kindly to the gardener’s will, knowing that he will make evident the half-obliterated traits of her pristine and ideal beauty, and allow her to take all the credit and praise to herself. I doubt whether there is ever any winter within that precinct,--any clouds except the fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw there rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal. The lawns and glades are like the memory of places where one has wandered when first in love.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A guide for travellers, furnished by the villages.

[2] Court of the magistrate attached to the palace.

[3] “The following account of Akbar’s Pachisi-board is from an old Agra periodical:--The game is usually played by four persons, each of whom is supplied with four wooden or ivory cones, which are called ‘gots,’ and are of different colours for distinction. Victory consists in getting these four pieces safely through all the squares of each rectangle into the vacant place in the centre,--the difficulty being that the adversaries take up in the same way as pieces are taken at backgammon. Moving is regulated by throwing ‘cowries,’ whose apertures falling uppermost or not, affect the amount of the throw by certain fixed rules. But on this Titanic board of Akbar’s, wooden or ivory ‘gots’ would be lost altogether. Sixteen girls, therefore, dressed distinctively--say four in red, four in blue, four in white, four in yellow--were trotted up and down the squares, taken up by an adversary, and put back at the beginning again; and at last, after many difficulties, four of the same colour would find themselves gliding into their _dopattas_ together in the middle space, and the game was won.”--_Bholanauth Chunder._

[4] Oluf, called God-dreng, who reigned before King Ring, is by Adam of Bremen supposed to be the real Holger Dansk: he accompanied Charlemagne to the Holy Sepulchre, and helped to place Prester John on the throne of India.

[5] In 1538 the citizens of Lund received orders to pull down the stone churches in disuse since the Reformation, and forward the materials to Copenhagen to be employed for the building of the new castle; and again, in 1552, a second supply was sent. Even Laura Maria, the big bell purchased with the legacy of Bishop Absalom, was not spared; she got cracked on the journey, was melted down and recast into two little ones, which still hang in the clock-tower of Kronborg. Laura Maria was looked upon almost as a saint, and Valdemar Atterdag, who believed in nothing, when on his death-bed is said to have roared out in a paroxysm of pain, “Help me, Soro! help me, Esrom! help me, Laura Maria, you big bell of Lund!”

[6] The Maiden’s Tower.

[7] The Rev. Matthew Horgan, the parish priest of Blarney, informs us that “the curious traveller will seek in vain for the _real_ stone, unless he allows himself to be lowered from the northern angle of the lofty castle, when he will discover it about twenty feet from the top with this inscription:--

Cormac MacCarthy Fortis,
Me Fieri Fecit. A. D., 1446.”

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.

3. Italics are shown as _xxx_.