LOCHES
Much may be written of Loches, of its storied past, of its present-day
quaintness, and of its wealth of architectural monuments. Its church is
certainly the most curious religious edifice in all France, judging from
a cross-section of the vaults and walls. More than all else, however,
Loches is associated in our minds with the memory of Agnes Sorel.
Within the walls of the old collegiate church the lovely mistress of
Charles VII. was buried in 1450; but later her remains and tomb were
removed to one of the towers of the ancient castle of Loches, where they
now are. She had amply endowed the church, but they would no longer give
shelter to her remains, so her bones were removed five hundred years
later. The statue which surmounts her tomb, as seen to-day, represents
the "gentille Agnes" in all her loveliness, with folded hands on breast,
a kneeling angel at her head and a couchant lamb at her feet,--a
reminder of her innocence, said Henry James, but surely he nodded when
he said it. Lovely she was, and good in her way, but innocent she was
not, as we have come to know the word.
[Illustration: _Loches_]
It is fitting to recall that Charles VII. was not the only monarch who
sang her praises, for it was Francois I. who, many years later, wrote
those lines beginning:
"Gentille Agnes, plus de loz tu merites."
Whether one comes to Loches by road or by rail, the first impression is
the same; he enters at once into a sleepy, old-world town which has
practically nothing of modernity about it except the electric lights.
There is but one way to realize the immense wealth of architectural
monuments centred at Loches, and that is to see the city for the first
time, as, perhaps, Francois Premier saw it when he journeyed from
Amboise, and came upon it from the heights of the forest of Loches. The
city has not grown much since that day. Then it had three thousand eight
hundred souls, and now it has five thousand.
Here, in the Foret de Loches, Henry II. of England built a
monastery,--yet to be seen,--known as the Chartreuse du Liget, in
repentance, or, perhaps, as a penance for the murder of Becket. Over the
doorway of this monastery was graven:
ANGLORUM HENRICUS REX
THOMAE COEDE CRUENTUS,
LIGETICOS FUNDAT CARTUSIA MONAKOS.
To-day the monastery is the property of a M. de Marsay, and therefore
not open to the public; but the Chapelle du Liget, near by, is a fine
contemporary church of the thirteenth century, well worth the admiration
too infrequently bestowed upon it.
The first view of Loches must really be much as it was in Francois's
time, except, perhaps, that the roadway down from the forest has
improved, as roads have all over France, and fruit-trees and vineyards
planted out, which, however, in no way change the aspect when the town
is first seen in the dim haze of an early November morning.
It is the sky-line _ensemble_ of the chateaux of the Renaissance period
which is their most varied feature. No two are alike, and yet they are
all wonderfully similar in that they cut the sky with turret, tower, and
chimney in a way which suggests nothing as much as the architecture of
fairy-land.
The artists who illustrated the old fairy-tale books and drew castles
wherein dwelt beautiful maidens could nowhere have found more real
inspiration than among the chateaux of the Loire, the Cher, and the
Indre.
Loches is a veritable mediaeval town, and it is even more than that, for
its history dates back into the earliest years of feudal times. Loches
is one of those _soi-disant_ French towns not great enough to be a
metropolis, and yet quite indifferent to the affairs of the outside
world.
The only false notes are those sounded by the various hawkers and
cadgers for the visitor's money, who have hired various old mediaeval
structures, within the walls, and assure one that in the basement of
their establishment there are fragments "recently discovered,"--this in
English,--quite worth the price of admission which they charge you to
peer about in a gloomy hole of a cellar, littered with empty
wine-bottles and rubbish of all sorts.
All this is delightful enough to the simon-pure antiquarian; but even he
likes to dig things out for himself, and the householders can't all
expect to find _cachots_ in their sub-cellars or iron cages in their
garrets unless they manufacture them.
The old town, in spite of its lack of modernity, is full of surprises
and contrasts that must make it very livable to one who cares to spend a
winter within its walls. He may walk about on the ramparts on sunny
days; may fish in the Indre, below the mill; and, if he is an artist, he
will find, within a comparatively small area, much more that is
exceedingly "paintable" than is usually found in the fishing-villages of
Brittany or on the sand-dunes of the Pas de Calais, "artist's
sketching-grounds" which have been pretty well worked of late.
[Illustration: _Loches and Its Church_]
The history of Loches is so varied and vivid that it is easy to account
for the many remains of feudal and Renaissance days now existing. The
derivation of its name is in some doubt. Loches was unquestionably the
Luccae of the Romans, but the Armorican Celts had the word _loc'h_,
meaning much the same thing,--_un marais_,--which is also wonderfully
like the _loch_ known to-day in the place-names of Scotland and the
_lough_ of Ireland. Partisans may take their choice.
In the fifth century a monastery was founded here by St. Ours, which
ultimately gave its name to the collegiate church which exists to-day. A
chateau, or more probably a fortress, appeared in the sixth century. The
city was occupied by the Franks in the seventh century, but by 630 it
had become united with Aquitaine. Pepin sacked it in 742, and Charles le
Chauve made it a seat of a hereditary government which, by alliance,
passed to the house of Anjou in 886, to whom it belonged up to 1205.
Jean-sans-Terre gave it to France in 1193. Richard Coeur de Lion
apparently resented this, for he retook it in the year following. In
1204, Philippe-Auguste besieged Chinon and Loches simultaneously, and
took the latter after a year, when he made it a fief, and gave it to
Dreux de Mello, Constable of France, who in turn sold it to St. Louis.
The chateau of Loches became first a fortress, guarding the ancient
Roman highway from the Blaisois to Aquitaine, then a prison, and then a
royal residence, to which Charles VII. frequently repaired with Agnes
Sorel, which calls up again the strangely contrasting influences of the
two women whose names have gone down in history linked with that of
Charles VII.
"Louis XI. aggrandized the chateau," says a French authority, "and
perfected the prisons," whatever that may mean. He did, we know, build
those terrible dungeons far down below the surface of the ground, where
daylight never penetrated. They were perfect enough in all conscience as
originally built, at least as perfect as the celebrated iron cage in
which he imprisoned Cardinal Balue. The cage is not in its wonted place
to-day, and only a ring in the wall indicates where it was once made
fast.
Charles VIII. added the great round tower; but it was not completed
until the reign of Louis XII. Francois I., in a not too friendly
meeting, received Charles Quint here in 1539, just previous to his visit
to Amboise. Marie de Medici, on escaping from Blois, stopped at the
chateau at the invitation of the governor, the Duc d'Epernon, who sped
her on her way, as joyfully as possible, to Angouleme.
The chateau itself is the chief attraction of interest, just as it is
the chief feature of the landscape when viewed from afar. Of course it
is understood that, when one speaks of the chateau at Loches, he refers
to the collective chateaux which, in more or less fragmentary form, go
to make up the edifice as it is to-day.
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 chateau that suggests so stupendously the story of its past.
The chief and most remarkable features are undoubtedly the great
rectangular keep or donjon, and the Tour Neuf or Tour Ronde. The first,
in its immensity, quite rivals the best examples of the kind elsewhere,
if it does not actually excel them in dimensions. It is, moreover,
according to De Caumont, the most beautiful of all the donjons of
France. As a state prison it confined Jean, Duc d'Alencon, Pierre de
Breze, and Philippe de Savoie.
The Tour Ronde is a great cylinder flanked with dependencies which give
it a more or less irregular form. It encloses the prison where were
formerly kept the famous cages, the invention of Cardinal Balue, who
himself became their first victim. The Tour Ronde is reminiscent of two
great female figures in the mediaeval portrait gallery,--Agnes Sorel and
Anne de Bretagne. The tomb of Agnes Sorel is here, and the Duchesse Anne
made an oratory in this grim tower, from which she sent up her prayer
for the success and unity of the political plans which inspired her
marriage into the royal family of France. It is a daintily decorated
chamber, with the queen's family device, the ermine with its twisted
necklet, prominently displayed.
In the passage which conducts to the dungeons of this great round tower,
one reads this ironical invitation: "_Entres, messieurs, ches le Roy
Nostre Mestre_" (_O.F._).
That portion of the collective chateaux facing to the north is now
occupied by the Sous-Prefecture, and is more after the manner of the
residential chateaux of the Loire than of a fortress-stronghold or
prison. Before this portion stands the famous chestnut-tree, planted, it
is said, by Francois I., "and large enough to shelter the whole
population of Loches beneath its foliage," says the same doubtful
authority.
Under a fifteenth-century structure, called the Martelet, are the true
dungeons of Loches. Here one is shown the cell occupied for nine years
by the poor Ludovic Sforza, who died in 1510, from the mere joy of being
liberated. More deeply hidden still is the famous Prison des Eveques of
the era of Francois I. and the dungeon of Comte de St. Vallier, the
father of the fascinating Diane, who herself was the means of securing
his liberation by "fascinating the king," as one French writer puts it.
This may be so. St. Vallier _was_ liberated, we know, and the
susceptible Francois _was_ fascinated, though he soon tired of Diane and
her charms. She had the perspicacity, however, to transfer her
affections to his son, and so kept up a sort of family relationship.
Like the historic "prisoner of Gisors," the occupants of the dungeons at
Loches whiled away their lonely hours by inscribing their sentiments
upon the walls. Only one remains to-day, though fragmentary stone-carved
letters and characters are to be seen here and there. He who wrote the
following was certainly as cheerful as circumstances would allow:
"Malgre les ennuis d'une longue souffrance,
Et le cruel destin dont je subis la loy,
Il est encort des biens pour moy,
Le tendre amour et la douce esperance."
Most of these formidable dungeons of Loches were prisons of state until
well into the sixteenth century.
[Illustration: _Sketch Plan of Loches_]
Beneath, or rather beside, the very walls of the chateau is the bizarre
collegiate church of St. Ours. One says bizarre, simply because it is
curious, and not because it is unchurchly in any sense of the word, for
it is not. Its low nave is surmounted by an enormous tower with a stone
spire, while there are two other pyramidal erections over the roof of
the choir which make the whole look, not like an elephant, as a cynical
Frenchman once wrote, but rather like a camel with two humps. This
strange architectural anomaly is, in parts, almost pagan; certainly its
font, a fragment of an ancient altar on which once burned a sacred fire,
_is_ pagan.
[Illustration: _St. Ours, Loches_]
There is a Romanesque porch of vast dimensions which is the real
artistic expression of the fabric, dressed with extraordinary primitive
sculptures of saints, demons, stryges, gnomes, and all manner of outre
things. All these details, however, are chiselled with a masterly
conception.
Behind this exterior vestibule the first bays of the nave form another,
a sort of an inner vestibule, which carries out still further the unique
arrangement of the whole edifice. This portion of the structure dates
from a consecration of the year 965, which therefore classes it as of
very early date,--indeed, few are earlier. Most of the church, however,
is of the twelfth century, including another great pyramid which rises
above the nave and the two smaller ones just behind the spire. The
side-aisles of the nave were added between the twelfth and fifteenth
centuries, while only the stalls and the tabernacle are as recent as the
sixteenth. The eastern end is triapsed, an unusual feature in France.
From this one realizes, quite to the fullest extent possible, the
antiquity and individuality of the Eglise de St. Ours at Loches.
The quaint Renaissance Hotel-de-Ville was built by the architect Jean
Beaudoin (1535-1543), from sums raised, under letters patent from
Francois I., by certain _octroi_ taxes. From the fact that through its
lower story passes one of the old city entrances, it has come to be
known also as the Porte Picoys. In every way it is a worthy example of
Renaissance civic architecture.
In the Rue de Chateau is a remarkable Renaissance house, known as the
Chancellerie, which dates from the reign of Henri II. It has most
curious sculptures on its facade interspersed with the devices of
royalty and the inscription:
IVSTITIA REGNO, PRUDENTIA NUTRISCO.
The Tour St. Antoine serves to-day as the city's belfry. It is all that
remains of a church, demolished long since, which was built in 1519-30,
in imitation of St. Gatien's of Tours. Doubtless it was base in many of
its details, as is its more famous compeer at Tours; but, if the old
tower which remains is any indication, it must have been an elaborate
and imposing work of the late Gothic and early Renaissance era.
As a literary note, lovers of Dumas's romances will be interested in the
fact that in the Hotel de la Couroirie at Loches a body of Protestants
captured the celebrated Chicot, the jester of Henri III. and Henri IV.
Loches has a near neighbour in Beaulieu, which formerly possessed an
ardent hatred for its more progressive and successful contemporary,
Loches. Its very name has been perverted by local historians as coming
from Bellilocus, "the place of war," and not "_le lieu d'un bel
aspect_."
The abbey church at Beaulieu was built by the warlike Foulques Nerra (in
1008-12), who usually built fortresses and left church-building to monks
and bishops. It is a remarkable Romanesque example, though, since the
fifteenth century, it has been mostly in ruins. Foulques Nerra himself,
whose countenance had "_la majeste de celui d'un ange_," found his last
resting-place within its walls, which also sheltered much rich ornament,
to-day greatly defaced, though that of the nave, which is still intact,
is an evidence of its former worth.
The abbatial residence, still existent, has a curious exterior pulpit
built into the wall, examples of which are not too frequent in France.
Agnes Sorel, the belle of belles, lived here for a time in a house near
the Porte de Guigne, which bears a great stone _panonceau_, from which
the armorial bearings have to-day disappeared. It is another notable
monument to "the most graceful woman of her times," and without doubt
has as much historic value as many another more popular shrine of
history.
In connection with Agnes Sorel, who was so closely identified with
Loches and Beaulieu, it is to be recalled that she was known to the
chroniclers of her time as "_la dame de Beaute-sur-Marne_,"--a place
which does not appear in the books of the modern geographers. It may be
noted, too, that it was the encouragement of the "_belle des belles_" of
Charles VII. that, in a way, contributed to that monarch's success in
politics and arms, for her sway only began with Jeanne d'Arc's
supplication at Gien and Chinon. Tradition has it, indeed, that it was
the "gentille Agnes" who put the sword of victory in his hands when he
set out on his campaign of reconquest. Thus does the Jeanne d'Arc legend
receive a damaging blow.
[Illustration: _Tours_]
The chateau of Sausac, an elegant edifice of the sixteenth century,
completely restored in later days, is near by.