AVALLON, VEZELAY AND CHASTELLUX
Avallon owes its origin to the construction of a chateau-fort. It was
built by Robert-le-Pieux, the son of Hugues Capet, in the tenth century.
Little by little the fortress has crumbled and very nearly disappeared.
All that remains are the foundation walls on what is locally called the
Rocher d'Avallon, virtually the pedestal upon which sits the present
city.
Avallon, like neighbouring Semur and Vezelay, sits snugly and proudly
behind its rampart of nature's ravines and gorges, a series of military
defences ready-made which on more than one occasion in mediæval times
served their purpose well.
It was in the old Chateau d'Avallon that Jacques d'Epailly, called
"Forte Épice," was giving a great ball when Philippe-le-Bon beseiged the
city. Jacques treated the inhabitants with the utmost disrespect, even
the ladies, and secretly quitted the ball just before the city troops
surrendered. History says that the weak-hearted gallant sold out to the
enemy and saved himself by the back door, and in spite of no documentary
evidence to this effect the long arm of coincidence points to the
dastardly act in an almost unmistakable manner.
Near Avallon are still to be seen extensive Roman remains. A Roman camp,
the Camp des Alleux, celebrated in Gaulish and Roman history, was here,
and the old Roman road between Lyons and Boulogne in Belgica Secundus
passed near by.
It is not so much with reference to Avallon itself, quaint and
picturesque as the city is, that one's interest lies hereabouts. More
particularly it is in the neighbouring chateaux of Chastellux and
Montréal.
The Seigneur de Chastellux was one of the most powerful vassals of the
Duc de Bourgogne. By hereditary custom the eldest of each new generation
presented himself before the Bishop of Auxerre clad in a surplice
covering his military accoutrements, and wearing a falcon at his wrist.
In this garb he swore to support Church and State, and for this devotion
was vested in the title of Chanoin d'Auxerre, a title which supposedly
served him in good stead in case of military disaster. It was thus that
the Maréchal de Chastellux, a famous warrior, was, as late as 1792,
also a canon of the cathedral at Auxerre. It was, too, in this grotesque
costume that the Chanoin-Comte d'Chastellux welcomed Louis XIV on a
certain visit to Auxerre. At Auxerre, in the cathedral, one sees a
monument commemorative of the Sires de Chastellux. It was erected by
César de Chastellux under the Restoration, to replace the tomb torn down
by the Chapter in the fifteenth century. This desecration, by churchmen
themselves, one must remember, took place in spite of the fact that a
Chastellux was even then a dignitary of the church.
Chastellux, beyond its magnificent chateau, is an indefinable,
unconvincing little bourg, but from the very moment one sets foot within
its quaintly named Hotel de Maréchal de Chastellux he, or she, is
permeated with the very spirit of romance and mediævalism. The bridge
which crosses the Cure in the middle of the village owns to the ripe old
age of three hundred and fifty years, and is still rendering efficient
service. This is something mature for a bridge, even in France, where
many are doing their daily work as they have for centuries. Will the
modern "suspension" affairs do as well? That's what nobody knows! The
hotel, or
[Illustration: _Chateau de Chastellux_]
_auberge_ rather, can not be less aged than the bridge, though the
manner in which it is conducted is not at all antiquated.
A rocky, jagged pedestal, of a height of perhaps a hundred and fifty
feet, holds aloft the fine mass of the Chateau de Chastellux. For eight
centuries this fine old pile was in the making and, though manifestly
non-contemporary as to its details, it holds itself together in a
remarkably consistent manner and presents an ensemble and silhouette far
more satisfactory to view than many a more popular historic monument of
its class. Its great round towers, their coiffes and the pignons and
gables of the roof, give it all a _cachet_ which is so striking that one
forgives, or ignores the fact that it is after all a work of various
epochs.
Visitors here are welcome. One may stroll the corridors and apartments,
the vast halls and the courtyard as fancy wills, except that one is
always discreetly ciceroned by a guardian who may be a man, a woman, or
even a small child. There is none of the espionage system about the
surveillance, however, and one can but feel welcome. Blazons in stone
and wood and tapestries are everywhere. They are the best, or the worst,
of their kind; one really doesn't stop to think which; the effect is
undeniably what one would wish, and surely no carping critic has any
right to exercise his functions here. There is not the least cause to
complain if the furnishings are of non-contemporary periods like the
exterior adornments, because the certain stamp of sincerity and
genuineness over all defies undue criticism.
The Chateau de Chastellux dates, primarily, from the thirteenth century,
with many fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century restorations or
additions which are readily enough to be recognized. From its inception,
the chateau has belonged to the family of Beauvoir-de-Chastellux, the
cadet branch of Anseric-de-Montréal.
Practically triangular in form, as best served its original functions of
a defensive habitation, this most theatrical of all Burgundian chateaux
is flanked by four great attached towers. The Tour de l'Horloge is a
massive rectangular pile of the fifteenth century; the Tour d'Amboise is
a round tower dating from 1592; the Tour de l'Hermitage and the Tour des
Archives, each of them, also round, are of the sixteenth century. In the
disposition and massiveness of these towers alone the Chateau de
Chastellux is unique. Another isolated tower, even more stupendous in
its proportions, is known as the Tour Saint Jean, and is a donjon of
the ideally acceptable variety, dating from some period anterior to the
chateau proper.
Moat-surrounded, the chateau is only to be entered by crossing an
ornamental waterway. One arrives at the actual entrance by the usual
all-eyed roadway ending at the _perron_ of the chateau where a simple
bell-pull silently announces the ways and means of gaining entrance. The
domestic appears at once and without questioning your right proceeds to
do the honours as if it were for yourself alone that the place were kept
open.
The chief and most splendid apartment is the Salle des Gardes, to a
great extent restored, but typical of the best of fifteenth century
workmanship and appointments. Its chimney-piece, as splendid in general
effect as any to be seen in the Loire chateaux, is but a re-made affair,
but follows the best traditions and encloses moreover fragments of
fifteenth century sculptures which are authentically of that period. The
cornice of this majestic apartment bears the Chastellux arms and those
of their allied families, interwoven with the oft repeated inscription,
_Monréal à Sire de Chastellux_. In this same Salle des Gardes are hung a
pair of ancient Gobelins, and set into the floor is a dainty morsel of
an antique mosaic found nearby.
The modern billiard-room, also shown to the inquisitive, contains
portraits of the Chancelier d'Aguesseau and his wife, and its
fittings--aside from the green baize tables and their accessories--are
well carried out after the style of Louis XIII. Good taste, or bad, one
makes no comment, save to suggest that the billiard tables look out of
place.
In what the present dweller calls the Salon Rouge are portraits and
souvenirs of a military ancestor Comte César de Chastellux, who, judging
from his dress and cast of countenance, must have been a warrior bold of
the conventional type.
After the Salle des Gardes the Grand Salon is the most effective
apartment. Its wall and ceiling decorations are the same that were
completed in 1696, and incorporated therein are fourteen portraits of
the Sires and Comtes who one day lived and loved within these castle
walls. These portraits are reproductions of others which were destroyed
by the unchained devils of the French Revolution who made way with so
much valuable documentary evidence from which one might build up French
mediæval history anew. The village church contains several tombal
monuments of the Chastellux.
The Chateau de Montréal, or Mont-Royal, so closely allied with the
fortunes of the Chastellux, between Avallon and Chastellux, is built
high on a mamelon overlooking the Seruin, and is one of the most ancient
and curious places in Burgundy. The little town, of but five hundred
inhabitants, is built up mostly of the material which came from one of
the most ancient of the feudal chateaux of mid-France. This chateau was
originally a primitive fortress, once the residence of Queen Brunhaut,
the wife of the Roi d'Austrasie in 566. It was from this hill-top
residence that the name Montréal has been evolved.
The sparse population of the place were benefited by special privileges
from the earliest times and the _cité movenageuse_ itself was endowed
with many admirable examples of administrative and domestic
architecture.
Of the Renaissance chateaux of the later seigneurs, here and there many
portions remain built into other edifices, but there is no single
example left which, as a whole, takes definite shape as a noble
historical monument. There are a dozen old Renaissance house-fronts,
with here and there a supporting tower or wall which is unquestionably
of mediæval times and might tell thrilling stories could stones but
speak.
In Renaissance annals Montréal was celebrated by the exploit of the Dame
de Ragny (1590), who recaptured the place after it had been taken
possession of by the Ligeurs during the absence of her husband, the
governor.
At the entrance of the old bourg is a great gateway which originally led
to the seigneurial enclosure. It is called the Port d'en Bas and has
arches dating from the thirteenth century. Montréal and its Mediæval
chateau was the cradle of the Anseric-de-Montréal family, who were
dispossessed in 1255 to the profit of the Ducs de Bourgogne. It was to
the cadet branch of this same family Chastellux once belonged.
To the west lies Vezelay, one of the most remarkable conglomerate piles
of ancient masonry to be seen in France to-day. It was a most luxurious
abode in mediæval times, and its great church, with its ornate portal
and façade, ranks as one of the most celebrated in Europe.
Vezelay is on no well-worn tourist track; it is indeed chiefly unknown
except to those who know well their ecclesiastical history. It was
within this famous church that Saint Bernard awakened the fervour of the
Crusade in the breast of Louis-le-Jeune. The abbey church saw, too,
Philippe-Auguste and Richard Coeur-de-Lion start for their Crusades,
and even Saint Louis came here before setting out from Aigues Mortes for
the land of the Turk. This illustrious church quite crushes anything
else in Vezelay by its splendour, but nevertheless the history of its
other monuments has been great, and the part played by the miniscule
city itself has been no less important in more mundane matters. Its
mediæval trading-fairs were famous throughout the provinces of all
France, and even afar.
In the middle ages Vezelay had a population of ten thousand souls;
to-day a bare eight hundred call it their home town.
The seigneurial chateau at Vezelay is hardly in keeping to-day with its
former proud estate. One mounts from the lower town by a winding street
lined on either side by admirably conserved Renaissance houses of an
unpretentious class. The chateau, where lodged Louis-le-Jeune, has
embedded in its façade two great shot launched from Huguenot cannon
during the siege of 1559. Another seigneurial "_hôtel privée_" has over
its portal this inscription:
"_Comme Colombe humble et simple seray_
_Et à mon nom mes moeurs conformeray._"
Here in opulent Basse-Bourgogne, where the vassals of a seigneur were
often as powerful as he, their dwellings were frequently quite as
splendid as the official residence of the overlord. It is this genuinely
unspoiled mediæval aspect of seemingly nearly all the houses of this
curious old town of Vezelay which give the place its charm.
The Porte Neuve is a great dependent tower which formerly was attached
to the residence of the governor--the chateau-fort in fact--and it still
stands militant as of old, supported on either side by two enormous
round towers and surmounted by a machicoulis and a serrated cornice
which tells much of its efficiency as a mediæval defence. To the right
are still very extensive remains of the fourteenth and fifteenth century
ramparts.
Near Vezelay is the Chateau de Bazoche, which possesses a profound
interest for the student of military architecture in France by reason of
its having been the birthplace of Maréchal Vauban, who became so
celebrated as a fortress-builder that he, as much as anybody, may be
considered the real welder of modern France. Vauban's body is buried in
the local churchyard, but his heart had the distinction of being torn
from his body and given a glorious (?) burial along with countless other
fragments of military heroes in the Hotel des Invalides at Paris.
Bazoches is not a name that is on the tip of the tongue of every mentor
and guide to French history, though the appearance of its chateau is
such that one wonders that it is not more often cited by the guide-books
which are supposed to point out the quaint and curious to vagabond
travellers. There are many such who had rather worship at a shrine such
as this than to spend their time loitering about the big hotels of the
flash resorts with which the Europe of the average tourist is becoming
overcrowded. Makers of guide-books and the managers of tourist agencies
do not seem to know this.
Bazoches is a townlet of five hundred inhabitants, and not one of them
cares whether you come or go. They do not even marvel that the chateau
is the only thing in the place that ever brings a stranger there,--they
ignore the fact that you are there, so by this reckoning one puts
Bazoches, the town and the chateau, down as something quite unspoiled.
Half the population lives in fine old Gothic and Renaissance houses
which, to many of us, used to living under another species of rooftree,
would seem a palace.
What the Chateau de Bazoches lacks in great renown it makes up for in
imposing effect. Each angle meets in a svelt round tower of the typical
picture-book and stage-carpenter fashion. Each tower is coiffed with a
peaked candle-snuffer cap and a row of machicoulis which gives the whole
edifice a warlike look which is unmistakable. The finest detail of all
is "La Grande Tour" supporting one end of the principle mass of the
chateau, and half built into the hillside which backs it up on the rear.
Vauban bought an old feudal castle in 1663 and added to it after his own
effective manner, thus making the chateau, as one sees it to-day, the
powerful bulwark that it is.
The chateau belongs to-day to the Vibrave family, who keep open house
for the visitor who would see within and without. The principle
apartment is entirely furnished with the same belongings which served
Vauban for his personal use.
Another neighbouring chateau, bearing also the name Chateau de Vauban,
was also the property of the Maréchal. It dates from the sixteenth
century, and though in no way historic, has many architectural details
worthy of observation and remark.