VINCENNES AND CONFLANS
[Illustration: VINCENNES UNDER CHARLES V]
Vincennes is to-day little more than a dull, dirty Paris suburb; if
anything its complexion is a deeper drab than that of Saint Denis, and
to call the Bois de Vincennes a park "somewhat resembling the Bois de
Boulogne," as do the guidebooks, is ridiculous.
In reality Vincennes is nothing at all except a memory. There is to-day
little suggestion of royal origin about the smug and murky surroundings
of the Chateau de Vincennes; but nevertheless, it once was a royal
residence, and the drama which unrolled itself within its walls was most
vividly presented. A book might be written upon it, with the following
as the chapter headings: "The Royal Residence," "The Minimes of the
Bois de Vincennes," "Mazarin at Vincennes," "The Prisoners of the
Donjon," "The Fetes of the Revolution," "The Death of the Duc
d'Enghien," "The Transformation of the Chateau and the Bois."
Its plots are ready-made, but one has to take them on hearsay, for the
old chateau does not open its doors readily to the stranger for the
reason that it to-day ranks only as a military fortress, and an
artillery camp is laid out in the quadrangle, intended, if need be, to
aid in the defence of Paris. This is one of the things one hears about,
but of which one may not have any personal knowledge.
The first reference to the name of Vincennes is in a ninth century
charter, where it appears as _Vilcenna_. The foundation of the original
chateau-fort on the present site is attributed to Louis VII, who, in
1164, having alienated a part of the neighbouring forest in favour of a
body of monks, built himself a suburban rest-house under shelter of the
pious walls of their convent.
Philippe Auguste, too, has been credited with being the founder of
Vincennes; but, at all events, the chateau took on no royal importance
until the reign of Saint Louis, who acquired the habit of dispensing
justice to all comers seated beneath an oak in the near-by Forest of
Joinville.
The erection of the later chateau was begun by Charles, Comte de Valois,
brother of Philippe-le-Bel; and it was completed by Philippe VI of
Valois, and his successor, Jean-le-Bon, between the years 1337 and 1370,
when it became an entirely new manner of edifice from what it had been
before. It was in this chateau that was born Charles V, to whom indeed
it owes its completion in the form best known.
To-day, the outlines of the mass of the Chateau de Vincennes are
considerably abbreviated from their former state. Originally it was
quite regular in outline, its walls forming a rectangle flanked by nine
towers, the great donjon which one sees to-day occupying the centre of
one side. The chapel was begun in the reign of Francois I and terminated
in that of Henri II. Its coloured glass, painted by Jean Cousin from the
designs of Raphael, is notable.
The chapel at Vincennes, with the Saint Chapelle of the Palais de
Justice at Paris, ranks as one of the most exquisite examples extant of
French Gothic architecture. It was begun in 1379, but chiefly it is of
the sixteenth century, since it was only completed in 1552. This chapel
of the sixteenth century, and the two side wings flanking the tower of
the reign of Louis XIV, make the Chateau de Vincennes a most precious
specimen of mediaeval ecclesiastical and military architecture. If
Napoleon had not cut down the height of the surrounding walls the
comparison would be still more favourable. In the reproduction of the
miniature from the Book of Hours of the Duc de Berry given herein one
sees the perfect outlines of the fourteenth century edifice.
In later years, Louis XIII added considerably to the existing structure,
but little is now to be seen of that edifice save the great tower and
the chapel.
Charles IX, whose royal edict brought forth the bloody night of Saint
Bartholomew in 1572, fell sick two years later in the Chateau de
Vincennes. Calling his surgeon, Ambroise Pare, to his side he exclaimed:
"My body burns with fever; I see the mangled Huguenots all about me;
Holy Virgin, how they mock me; I wish, Pare, I had spared them." And
thus he died, abhorring the mother who had counselled him to commit this
horrible deed.
The donjon of Vincennes was carried to its comparatively great height
that it might serve as a tower of observation as well as a place of last
retreat if in an attack the outer walls of the fortress should give way.
Here at Vincennes a certain massiveness is noted in connection with the
donjon, though the actual ground area which it covers is not very
great; it was not like many donjons of the time, which were virtually
smaller chateaux or fortresses enclosed within a greater.
Vincennes, in comparison with many other contemporary edifices,
possessed a certain regularity of outline which was made possible by its
favourable situation. When others were of fantastic form, they were
usually so built because of the configuration of the land, or the nature
of the soil. But here the land was flat, and, though the edifice and its
dependencies covered no very extended area, they followed rectangular
lines with absolute precision.
As its walls were of a thickness of three metres, it was a work easy of
accomplishment for Louis XI to turn the chateau into a Prison of State,
a use to which the first chateau had actually been put by the shutting
up in it of Enguerrand de Marigny. Henri IV, in 1574, passed some
solitary hours and days within its walls, and Mirabeau did the same in
1777. The Duc d'Enghien, under the First Empire, before his actual death
by shooting, suffered sorely herein, while resting under an unjust
suspicion.
[Illustration: _Chateau de Vincennes_]
In 1814-1815 the chateau became a great arsenal and general storehouse
for the army. It was attacked by the Allies and besieged twice, but in
vain. It was defended against the armies of Blucher by the Baron
Daumesnil. Summoned to surrender his charge, "Jambe de Bois" (so called
because he had lost a leg the year before) replied: "I will surrender
when you surrender to me my leg." A statue to this brave warrior is
within the chateau, and commemorates further the fact that he
capitulated only on terms laid down by himself out of his humane regard
for the lives of friends and foes.
The ministers of Charles X, in 1830, had cause to regret the strength of
the chateau walls; and Barbes, Blanqui and Raspail, in 1848, and various
Republicans, who had been seized as dangerous elements of society after
the Coup d'Etat of 1851, also here found an enforced hospitality. The
Chateau de Vincennes had become a second Bastille.
The incident of the arrest and death of the Duc d'Enghien is one of the
most dramatic in Napoleonic history. The scene was Vincennes. Louis
Antoine Henri de Bourbon, son of the Prince de Conde, born at Chantilly
in 1772, became, without just reason, suspected in connection with the
Cadoudal-Pichegreu plot, and was seized by a squadron of cavalry at the
Schloss Ettenheim in the Duchy of Baden and conducted to Vincennes.
Here, after a summary judgment, he was shot at night in the moat behind
the guardhouse. The obscurity of the night was so great that a lighted
lantern was hung around the neck of the unfortunate man that the
soldiers might the better see the mark at which they were to shoot.
Napoleon confided to Josephine, who repeated the secret to Madame de
Remusat, that his political future demanded a _coup d'Etat_. On the
morning of the execution, the emperor, awakening at five o'clock, said
to Josephine: "By this time the Duc d'Enghien has passed from this
life."
The rest is history--of that apologetic kind which is not often
recorded.
In the chapel at Vincennes a commemorative tablet was placed, by the
orders of Louis XVIII, in 1816, to mark the death of the young duke.
The Bois de Vincennes is not the fashionable parade ground of the Bois
de Boulogne. On the whole it is a sad sort of a public park, and not at
all fashionable, and not particularly attractive, though of a vast
extent and possessed of a profoundly historic past of far more
significance than that of its sweet sister by the opposite gates of
Paris.
[Illustration: _A Hunt under the Walls of Vincennes_
_From a Fourteenth Century Print_]
It contains ten hundred and sixty-nine hectares and was due originally
to Louis XV, who sought to have a sylvan gateway to the city from the
east. Under the Second Empire the park was considerably transformed, new
roads and alleys traced, and an effort made to have it equal more
nearly the beauty of the more popular Bois de Boulogne. It occupies the
plateau lying between the Seine and the bend in the Marne, just above
the junction of the two rivers.
There are some forty kilometres of roadway within the limits of the Bois
de Vincennes, and a dozen kilometres or more of footpaths; but, since
the military authorities have taken a portion for their own uses as a
training ground, a shooting range and for the Batteries of La
Faisanderie and Gravelle, it has been bereft of no small part of its
former charm. There are three lakes in the Bois, the Lac de Sainte
Mande, the Lac Daumesnil and the Lac de Gravelle.
A near neighbour of Vincennes is Conflans, another poor, rent relic of
monarchial majesty. The Chateau de Conflans was situated at the juncture
of the Seine and Marne, but, to-day, the immediate neighbourhood is so
very unlovely and depressing that one can hardly believe that it ever
pleased any one's fancy, least of all that of a kingly castle builder.
Banal dwellings on all sides are Conflans' chief characteristics to-day;
but the old royal abode still lifts a long length of roof and wall to
mark the spot where once stood the Chateau de Conflans in all its
glory.
Conflans was at first the country residence of the Archbishops of Paris,
and Saint Louis frequently went into retreat here. When Philippe-le-Bel
acquired the property, he promptly gave it to the Comtesse d'Artois who
made of it one of the "_plus beaux castels du temps_." She decorated its
long gallery, the portion of the edifice which exists to-day in the
humble, emasculated form of a warehouse of some sort, in memory of her
husband Othon. Here the countess held many historic receptions and
ceremonies during which kings and princes frequently partook of her
hospitality.
[Illustration: CONFLANS from an OLD PRINT.]
After the death of the countess, the French king made his residence at
Conflans, and Charles VI, when dauphin, was also lodged here that he
might be near the capital in case of events which might require his
presence. A contemporary account mentions the fact that his _valet de
chambre_ was killed by lightning at Conflans while serving his royal
master.
Conflans was the preferred suburban residence of the Princes and the
Ducs de Bourgogne, and Philippe-le-Hardi there organized his tourneys
and his _passes d'armes_ with great eclat, on one occasion alone
offering one hundred and fifteen thousand _livres_ in prizes to the
participants.
This castle, for it was more castle than palace, was reputed one of the
most magnificent in the neighbourhood of the Paris of its time,
surrounded as it was with a resplendent garden and a forest in
miniature, really a part of the Bois de Vincennes of to-day, where
roamed wild boar and wolves which furnished sport of a kingly kind.
The view from the terrace of the chateau must have been wonderfully
fine, the towers and roof-tops of old Paris being silhouetted against
the setting sun, its windows dominating the swift-flowing current of the
two rivers at the foot of the fortress walls.
The greatest event of history enacted under the walls of Conflans was
the battle and the treaty which followed after, between Louis XI and the
Comte de Charolais, in 1405.
Commynes recounts the battle as follows: "Four thousand archers were
sent out from Paris by the king, who fired upon the castle from the
river bank on both sides."
Bows and arrows were hardly effective weapons with which to shoot down
castle walls, but stragglers who left themselves unprotected were from
time to time picked off on both sides and much carnage actually ensued.
Finally a treaty of peace was arranged, by which, at the death of
Charles-le-Temeraire, according to usage, Louis XI absorbed the
proprietary rights in the castle and made it a _Maison Royale_,
bestowing it upon one of his favourites, Dame Gillette Hennequin.
The kings of France about this time developed a predilection for the
chateaux on the banks of the Loire, and Conflans was offered for sale in
1554. Divers personages occupied it from that time on, the Marechal de
Villeroy, the Connetable de Montmorency and, for a brief time, Cardinal
Richelieu.
It was in the Chateau de Conflans that was planned the foundation of the
French Academy; here Moliere and his players first presented "La
Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes"; and here, also, was held the marriage
of La Grande Mademoiselle with the unhappy Lauzan.
At the end of the reign of Louis XIV Fr. de Harlay-Chauvallon,
Archbishop of Paris, bought the property of Richelieu, and, with the
aid of Mansart and Le Notre, considerably embellished it within and
without. Madame de Sevigne, in one of her many published letters, writes
of the splendours which she saw at Conflans at this epoch.
Saint-Simon, the court chronicler, mentions that the gardens were so
immaculately kept that when the Archbishop and "La Belle" Duchesse de
Lesdiguieres used to promenade therein they were followed by a gardener
who, with a rake, sought to remove the traces of each footprint as soon
as made.
Later, the Cardinal de Beaumont, the persecutor of the Jansenists,
resided here.
"Notre archeveque est a Conflans
C'est un grand solitaire
C'est un grand so
C'est un grand so
C'est un grand solitaire."
The above verse is certainly banal enough, but the cardinal himself was
a _drole_, so perhaps it is appropriate. At any rate it is contemporary
with the churchman's sojourn at Conflans.