"CHASTILLON AU NOBLE DUC"
(The War Cry of the Bourguignons)
The importance of the ancient Chastillon on the banks of the Seine was
entirely due to the prominence given to it by the Burgundian dukes of
the first race who made it their preferred habitation.
The place was the ancient capital of the Bailliage de la Montague, the
rampart and keep to the Burgundian frontier from the tenth to the
fifteenth century.
The origin of the Chateau des Ducs is blanketed in the night of time.
Savants, even, can not agree as to the date of its commencement. One
says that it and its name were derived from Castico, a rich Sequanais;
and another that it comes from Castell, an enclosed place; or from
Castellio--a small fortress. Each seems plausible in the absence of
anything more definite, though according to the castle's latest
historian it owes its actual inception to the occupation of the Romans
who did build a castrum here in their time.
During the pourparlers between Henri IV and the League, the inhabitants
of the city demanded of Nicolas de Gellan, governor of the place, the
giving up of the castle which had for years been the cause of so much
misery and misfortune. The place had been the culminative point of the
attacks of centuries of warriors, and the inhabitants believed that they
had so suffered that it was time to cry quits.
When the surrender, or the turning over, of the castle took place, all
the population, including women and children, marched en masse upon the
structure, and wall by wall and stone by stone dismantled it, leaving it
in the condition one sees it to-day. A castle of sorts still exists, but
it is a mere wraith of its former self. There is this much to say for
it, however, and that is that its stern, grim walls which still stand
remain as silent witnesses to the fact that it was not despoiled from
without but demolished from within. Peace came soon after, and the
people in submitting to the new régime would not hear of the rebuilding
of the chateau, and so for three hundred years its battered walls and
blank windows have stood the stresses of rigorous winters and broiling
summers, a
[Illustration: _Chateau des Ducs, Châtillon_]
silent and conspicuous monument to the rights of the people.
The majestic tower of the chateau, for something more than the mere
outline of the ground-plan still exists, is bound to two others by a
very considerable expanse of wall of the donjon, and by the _courtines_
which formerly joined the bastions with the main structure.
The suggestion of the ample inner court is still there, and the
foundations of still two other towers, as well as various ruined walls.
A neighbouring edifice, the buildings formerly occupied by the Canons of
Saint Vorles, is inexplicably intermingled with the ruins of the chateau
in a way that makes it difficult to tell where one leaves off and the
other begins. The _chevet_ of the Eglise de Saint Vorles and its
churchyard also intermingle with the confines of the chateau in an
extraordinary manner. To say the least, the juxtaposition of things
secular and ecclesiastic is the least bit incongruous.
Châtillon's Tour de Gissey, practically an accessory to the chateau, is
a noble work whose well-preserved existence is due entirely to the
solidity of its construction. Its lower ranges are of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, but its upper gallery and its row of _meurtrières_
were due to the military engineers of Henri IV. who sought to make it
the better serve the purpose of their royal master.
Within this tower are two fine apartments, of which the upper, known as
the Salle des Gardes, was, before the Revolution, the sepulchre of
certain wealthy neighbouring families.
Within the limits of the plot which surrounds the chateau, the church
and the tower, is the tomb of Maréchal Marmont, Duc de Raguse.
The present edifice at Châtillon occupied by the Sous-Préfecture was
built, as a plaque on the wall indicates, by Madame la Comtesse de
Langeac in 1765. It is a fine example of the architecture of the period
which, in spite of glaring inconsistencies to be noted once and again,
is unquestionably most effective, and suggests that after all the
chateau filled its purpose well as a great town house of a wealthy
noble. The building plays a public part to-day, and if it serves its
present purpose half as well as its former, no one should complain.
Within this really superb and palatial structure is still to be seen the
magnificent stairway of forged iron of the period of Louis XVI. Besides
this are various apartments with finely sculptured wooden panels and
rafters of the same epoch, all of which accessories were brought
thither from the nearby Chateau de Courcelles-les-Ranges, demolished
during the Revolution.
The Chateau de Marmont at Châtillon was formerly the princely residence
of the Maréchal de Marmont, rebuilt from the fifteenth century chatelet
occupied by the Sires de Rochefort, who were simply the appointed
chatelains of the Duc de Bourgogne, to whom the property really
belonged.
In various successive eras the edifice was transformed, or added to,
until it took its present form, the gradual transformation leaving
little or no trace of its original plan.
The Maréchal de Marmont, one of Châtillon's most illustrious sons, would
have transformed his native city into a Burgundian Versailles, or at
least a "Garden City." He did found a great agricultural enterprise, of
which the chateau, its gardens and its park, formed the pivot. Too
enterprising for his times, the Duc de Raguse saw himself ruined, and
then came the German invasion of '71, when, in a combat with the
Garibaldians, the chateau was burned.
Châtillon has perpetuated the name of its great man in the public
_place_, and also by naming one of the principal streets for him, but
has not yet erected a statue to him. This indeed may be a blessing in
disguise. Statues in trousers are seldom dignified, and this noble duke
lived too late for cloak and sword or suit armour.
The Chateau de Marmont, so called even to-day, was rebuilt after the
fire and now serves a former Maire of the city as his private residence.
Châtillon-sur-Seine was--though all the world seems to have forgotten or
ignored it--the seat of a convention in 1814 which proposed leaving
France its original territorial limits of 1792, a proposition of the
ambassadors which was utterly rejected by Napoleon.
Albeit that Châtillon lies on the banks of the Seine it is well within
the confines of Burgundy. Roundabout is a most fascinating and little
exploited region.
Thirty kilometres to the north is Bar-sur-Seine and to the northwest
Brienne-le-Chateau, where the Corsican first learned the rudiments of
the art of war.
"_La grand'ville de Bar-sur-Seine a fait trembler Troyes en
Champaigne!_" Poor _grand'ville_! To-day it is withered and all but
dried up and blown away. Poor grand'ville! It is the same of which
Froissart recounts that it lost in one day the houses of nine hundred
"_nobles et de riches bourgeois_" by fire. Without doubt these houses
were of wooden frames and offered but little resistance to fire, as the
period was 1359. Afterwards the town was rebuilt and became again
populous and rich. Then began the decadence, until to-day it is the
least populous "_chef-lieu_" of the department. Its population is, and
ever has been, part Bourguignon and part Champagnois, the latter
province being but a league to the northward, where, on the actual
boundary, is found the curiously named little village of Bourguignons.
South from Châtillon, across the great forest of the same name, one of
the great national forests of France so paternally cared for by the
Minister for Agriculture, is the actual source of the Seine. Here is
what the engineers call a "Chateau d'Faux," though there is little
enough of the real chateau of romance about it. It is simply a
head-house with an iron _grille_ and various culverts and canals and
what not which lead the bubbling waters of the Seine to a wider bed
lower down, there to continue their way, via Paris, to the sea.
A classic sculpture, typifying the Source of the Seine, has been erected
commemorating the achievement of the engineers, but appropriate as the
sentiment is it has not prevented the dishonouring hand of that
abominable certain class of tourist of graving its names and dates
thereon.
The Seine at this point is nothing very majestic. It is simply a
"_humble filet que le nain vert, Oberon, franchirait d'un bond sans
mouiller ses grelots_." All Frenchmen, and Parisians in particular, have
a reverence for every kilometre of the swift-flowing waters of the
Seine. This is perhaps difficult for the stranger, who may be familiar
with greater if less historic streams at home, to appreciate until he
has actually discussed the thing with some Frenchman. Then he learns
that it is the Frenchman's Niagara, Mississippi and Yosemite and Pike's
Peak all rolled into one so far as his worship goes.
Midway between Châtillon and the source is Duesme, a smug, unheard of
little hamlet, the successor of a feudal bourg of great renown in its
day. The sparse ruined walls still suggest the pride of place which it
once held when capital of the powerful Burgundian Countship of Duesme.
Its walls are still something more than mere outlines, but the manorial
residence has become one of those "walled farms," so called, so
frequently seen, and so unexpectedly, in the countryside of France. Here
and there a gate-post, a wall or a gable, is as of old, and two great
ornamental vases support the entrance to the alleyed row of trees which
leads from the highroad to the dwelling, suggesting, if in a vague way,
the old adage, "Other days, other ways."
The fall of this fine old feudal residence has been great, but the
present occupant--if he has a thought or care for such things--must be
content indeed with such a princely farm-house. It must be a fine thing
to raise chickens and other barn-yard livestock amid such surroundings!