RIDE TO LOCHES--AN ACCIDENT--THE CASTLE OF LOCHES--ITS
HISTORY--THE CAGES OF LOUIS XI.--THEIR COST TO THE KING--AGNES OF
SOREL--THE MISTRESSES OF FRENCH KINGS VERSUS THEIR QUEENS
Life is all sparkle to-day in this fair city of Tours, her people are
evidently happy and we are not the least so as the car flies down the
wide avenues, through her Champs-Élysées, and crossing the river, turns
south-eastward through smiling meadows, where the sheep are grazing
and the people wave at us as we pass. Some miles out on a long stretch
of highway we are rapidly approaching a train of a dozen empty carts,
each bearing a man and a woman, and, between the rattle of the carts
and the clattering tongues of their occupants, I fancy the outer world
and its sounds are completely drowned. However, we have a clear stretch
to their left, can easily pass without danger, and are skimming onward
with little thought of a catastrophe when, as we reach the last cart
but one forward, it quietly draws out immediately across our track,
evidently to allow the occupants to gossip with greater ease with
those of the cart in front. Jean shuts off all power, puts on all
breaks, we all shriek and horn and trumpet, to the utter confusion of
the peasants, who drive in every direction save the right one, like a
flock of chickens. There is no averting a collision, but we minimise
as far as possible its danger and it results in nothing worse than a
bent lamp as we bang into the tail-board of the cart, causing the old
lady and gentleman therein to turn complete somersaults and land by
the wayside,--reeds shaken by the winds, as it were,--but the winds of
heaven were like unto a dead calm when compared with the clatter and
shrieks which arose around us. I am afraid the remarks were personal,
though the ancient dame who was dumped into the grass, when I told her
her tongue was as long as her arm and had caused all the damage, looked
at me in grand amaze and said--nothing. She knew that it was true and
she knew also that the others would tell her that it _was_ true after
we had vanished. At least I think the unfortunates of her village will
be safe from the organ for a day or so.
[Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES
From a photograph]
The day changes as we move onward, and under clouds and through a
gloomy forest we near the towers of Loches,[2] the most remarkable
relic extant of the darkest days of the Middle Ages, the favourite
abode of Louis XI. Doubtless he had many times approached over this
same road and down this way his victims must have passed, the most of
them to disappear forever,--certainly Cardinal Balue came this way
from Plessis-lès-Tours, to occupy a cage of his own designing for many
years. The forest drops away, and off across a valley we obtain our
first glimpse of the château, its great square towers rising dark and
forbidding, while all around it clusters the ancient city with its
convent, church, and palace. The panorama is not so fantastic as that
of Carcassonne, there are not so many pinnacles, barbettes, and curious
towers, it is not backed by a glowing sky, but the whole is somber,
majestic, and gloomy,--a fitting appearance for a château with such
history.
[2] Pronounced "Loche."
As we roll onward up its narrow streets, the clouds lower and we are
forced to take refuge under cover; but the rain does not last long and
shortly we come out again, leaving the church and palace to our left,
and noting as we move onward that while Carcassonne possessed few, if
any, private houses of the nobility, these streets present many even
to-day. Interesting façades rise around us at every turn, but with the
castle before us we do not pause until under the shadow of its great
gateway. I know of nothing in Europe more impressive of its kind than
this entrance to the Château of Loches. It is absolutely unchanged by
the flight of years. The moat, the drawbridge, the low-browed heavy
portal, with the great square donjon rising above, inspire me with a
greater respect for the power of that old King Louis, and, as I clang
the bell, I wonder whether I may come out again once these portals
close behind me,--a question I put to the bright-eyed French woman who
smilingly admits me and as smilingly assures me that I may indeed go
hence.
[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES
From a photograph]
Once inside, the great tower, which replaced an ancient Roman fortress
in the eleventh century, rises one hundred and thirty feet before me
in all its majesty. One does not see from here that it is but an empty
shell, yet on entering it loses none of its impressiveness as one
gazes upward through its vastness, noting where the floors were, and
even from below descrying the many inscriptions carved by the weary
prisoners of the King. I can distinctly see from here one deeply cut,
"Help--God or man," which tells its own story.
In this donjon--except the floors--there is nothing which could be
consumed by fire. Its walls are nine feet in thickness at their
base and six at the summit. The interior shows a deep well which
communicated by subterranean passages with all the feudal châteaux in
the neighbourhood, and was used to re-victual the Castle in times of
siege. That this great tower was the royal residence in feudal days
can be seen by the divisions on the walls. Such prisoners as were here
confined were of little importance as they possessed light and fresh
air.
The little donjon adjoining the greater served as the residence of
the Governor and communicated with the former tower by staircases in
the thickness of the walls. It was in this section of the castle that
history was made throughout so many centuries. We first hear of it when
Foulques le Roux, Count of Anjou, acquired it by marriage in 879--but
of all the lives lived out here before this date there is no tale
remaining to us. It became the cradle of the Plantagenet race. John
of England ceded the Castle to Philip Augustus in 1192, but Coeur de
Lion on his return from captivity objecting, took it by storm; again it
passed to France after a year's siege by Philip Augustus in 1205. Bells
rang out for the wedding in this queer place of James V. of Scotland
and Madeline of France, but that was after the days of Louis XI, and
really nothing else holds the attention of the traveller here to-day
save this King, sordid and devilishly horrible.
The great donjon does not contain the most famous and fearful of
Louis's prisons. You must pass on to the right and enter the smaller
towers to find the cages where he placed those high in his favour.
Both in the round tower and the Martelet and every tower of the outer
walls, you will find dungeon under dungeon, high up or far underground,
where the sun never shines and where men learned to see in the black
darkness, as the carvings and names testify, for, rest assured,
Louis allowed no lights to his guests in Loches. Passing onward, the
traveller enters the round tower built by Louis. It is still in very
excellent condition. Here one finds all the original floors in place.
Here are the guard-rooms and many prisons,--used as such by the town
to-day,--amongst them the great conical chamber where hung the famous
iron and wooden cage of Cardinal Balue--an invention of his own, in
which for conspiracy with Charles le Téméraire he spent eleven years,
though some authorities state that it was but three. The tower is
shaped like a vast cistern with a conical top, its walls are circular
and there are slit-like apertures, through which the wind moans, and
the sunlight could never come save in stray shafts, making the shadows
deeper by contrast.
[Illustration: THE CAGE IN WHICH JEAN DE LA BALUE WAS IMPRISONED FOR
ELEVEN YEARS]
Down the passage yonder, which communicates underground with the great
donjon, Louis and his Tristan entered to torment the Cardinal, swinging
like a huge bird in his cage. The walls still show two holes in each
side into which the beams supporting the cage, were inserted,--the
chains from each corner thereof met in a ring at the top, which was
fastened into the beams and turned on a pivot. The cage composed of
wood, bound and riveted with iron, formed a cube four feet in size,
wherein its occupant could neither lie down or stand up, and there
the Cardinal spent eleven years exposed and yet confined. A singular
refinement of torture that.
This cage in Loches, in which the historian Philippe de Comines was
also confined, was very different from that in the Bastille,--the
prison for fourteen years of the Bishop of Verdun. The expense account
of the period holds the following item concerning that cage:
"For making a great wooden cage of heavy beams, joists, and rafters,
measuring inside nine feet long by eight broad and seven high between
the planks, mortised and bolted with great iron bolts, which has
been fixed in a certain chamber of one of the towers of the Bastille
St. Antoine, in which said cage, is put and kept, by command of our
Lord the King, a prisoner that before inhabited an old, decayed, and
worn-out cage. Used in making said new cage ninety-six horizontal
beams and fifty-two perpendiculars, ten joists each eighteen feet long;
employed in squaring, planing, and fitting all the said woodwork in the
yard of the Bastille, nineteen carpenters for twenty days,--used in
the cage two hundred and twenty great iron bolts nine feet long,--with
plates and nuts for fastening of said bolts, the iron weighing three
thousand seven hundred and thirty-five pounds,--besides eight heavy
iron _equières_, for fixing the said cage in its place with cramp-irons
and nails weighing all together two hundred and eighteen pounds,
without reckoning the iron for the trellis work of the windows of the
chamber in which said cage has been placed, the iron bars of the door
of the chamber and other articles. The whole amounts to three hundred
and seventeen livres, five sol and seven deniers."
A great, cubical mass of masonry, iron, and woodwork, its windows so
thickly latticed with bars of iron that no glass was visible,--its
door, one large flat stone like a tomb,--a door for entrance only! "Our
Lady!" exclaimed the King, "here is a cage out of all reason."
Therefore he curtailed expenses and space when he caused to be
constructed the habitation for his Eminence of Balue, and then again
there was exercise for the Cardinal as the cage was swung to and fro
or whirled on its pivot at the bidding of Louis. What a picture! The
great, gloomy, conical shaped prison, with the cage swinging to and
fro, now in dense shadow and anon in the rift of sunlight shooting in
through the slits in the wall,--the grotesque figure of the wretched
old King crouching on the incline in yonder passage mumbling prayers
before the leaden figures of the Virgin with which his greasy old hat
is laden, and stopping now and then to command Tristan to "further
agitate his Eminence." It is not reported that any remarks came from
the Cardinal in the cage for he knew he had been guilty of treason and
hope was not for him.
Cages would appear to have been the fad of King Louis. There were two
in Loches, and one at the old palace of the Tournelles. The one in
the Bastille was evidently too spacious (9 x 8 x 7 feet), and it was
considered necessary to attach a ball to the ankle of the unfortunate
Bishop of Verdun, who, it is also stated, was the originator of these
cages and not Cardinal Balue. It was a distinction scarcely coveted,
I fancy, to be confined in one of these "filets du Roi." The cages in
Loches existed in perfect condition until the days of 1789, when they
were destroyed and the wood given to the poor, but a relic of one still
exists in the barred door through which you pass into the corridor just
outside. That is the same door which shut in the Cardinal for so many
years, and you feel like leaving one of your number--not your heir
at law--on guard, to see that it does not do likewise for yourself.
Knowing Louis, one is quite certain that these prisoners were not
allowed to feel forgotten, as Louis XIV. probably forgot Matthioli, the
Man of the Iron Mask, whose master, Charles of Mantua, was in Paris
when he died in 1703. It is very doubtful whether master or captor
would, at first, have remembered who the poor wretch was who was being
dragged to his grave in the Cemetery of St. Paul whilst they feasted
in the Luxembourg.
The Bastille witnessed few such horrors as those so common within the
walls of Loches.
Passing up the corridor to lesser prisons, one comes to a chamber with
a vast chimney where the question, ordinary and extraordinary, was
applied, and where one still finds many of the instruments of torture.
I know of no more gruesome spot on earth than this castle, unless it be
those chambers at Nuremberg, where chamber after chamber is filled with
every conceivable instrument of torture until one stands shuddering
before the Iron Virgin. Still, after all, those chambers and their
instruments meant a speedy death, but Louis knew that life, as he could
dole it out here, was more horrible than _any_ death.
It is a relief to mount a winding stair in the thickness of the
walls and emerge into the free fresh air. The panorama over city and
rolling country is charming, and my red auto down there at the portal
re-assuring, but neither can hold us long from a renewed contemplation
of this château.
Passing down into the court, we cross a grassy enclosure towards the
walls, and the tower of the Martelet, where we descend ninety-six steps
into prisons cut in the solid rock, passing four floors of them; the
first was for ordinary prisoners and is of no interest, as there is too
much sunlight and air. In the dungeon just below was imprisoned for ten
years Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, a prisoner of Louis XII. in 1500.
These walls are covered with carvings made during those ten years.
There are many inscriptions and this carved face before us is said to
be his portrait. Below is the name:
"Ludovico."
A sort of shadow of daylight penetrates through a small, heavily barred
window in the wall twelve feet thick, and opposite this Ludovico deeply
engraved in the stone a dial plate, which permitted him to know the
passing of the hours.
Further downward in the rock you find another prison where Francis I.
confined the father of Diane de Poitiers, whose hair whitened in a
single night. This prison is more gloomy than the one above it. We find
here the name of one of the officers in the Scotch guard of Louis XI.,
"Ebenezer Kelburn." In the centre of the chamber there is an oubliette
to the darkness below. Down there are the fosses waiting for more
victims, which in the days when this chamber above was used for the
torture, were not slow in coming.
[Illustration: LOUIS XI.
From the engraving by Hoopwood]
Pontbrillant, governor of Loches, who certainly knew all the secrets of
the donjons found an iron door which, upon being forced open, led in to
a long passage cut in the rock, which conducted to a chamber far under
ground, where was seated upon a stone a gigantic man, holding his head
in his hands. The admission of the air reduced him instantly to dust,
and in like manner, there crumbled away a little coffer of wood which
had enclosed some linen, very white and carefully folded. Who or what
he had been was never known.
In the oubliette of the tower, is to be read an inscription which shows
that the Revolution placed its seal upon Loches: "Without fear, we
destroy the high walls, break the chains, and cause to disappear the
tortures invented by the King, too weak to arrest a people moving to
liberty.--1785"
Doubtless this fortress would repay weeks of research and yield up many
a present unknown dungeon, each with its grizzly horror and tale of
distress. Against modern artillery it would have little show, but in
the Middle Ages it was almost impregnable.
The great donjon and inner sections surrounded by its immense wall,
with many towers, is in its turn encompassed by a moat completely
isolating the whole. The second line of fortifications established
subsequently by Philip Augustus comprised also a moat "twenty-five
metres in depth," and bastions flanked by round towers and "tours à
bec."
On the top of the bastions which were a mile and a half in circuit was
a road protected by double walls. One of its outer gates is called the
"Gate of the Queen," because Maria de Medici entered there after her
escape from Blois in 1619.
That there is so much of Loches standing to-day is probably due to the
knowledge of the destroyers of 1793 that Louis, while he would hang a
few of the people now and then, turned most of his attention to the
upper classes. One was sure of good company if one went to the gibbet
or to jail in those days of the fifteenth century.
Loches does not appear to have been inhabited often by royalty after
the reign of Louis XII. when the usefulness of such fortresses
passed away, but it stood in perfect condition until 1793, and what
is left will endure while time lasts, an object of intense interest to
all who behold it.
The clouds lower darker and darker as we move to leave this forbidding
spot. The air is heavy as though laden with the sorrows of those who
never left it, even after death; the winds sough through the ghostly
trees, causing their branches to rattle against the walls of the great
donjon like skeleton fingers,--and it is with a feeling of relief that
we hear the outer portal clang behind us and know that we are outside.
As I pause a moment, I can distinguish the sound of the foot-falls of
my late guide, dying away fainter and fainter inside, and then silence
deep and unbroken settles over the Château of Loches.
In the town there is a cathedral and a royal palace and the whole was
at one time surrounded by a great outer wall.
Though the general effect is not so picturesque as Carcassonne, it is
far more majestic, and its inspection amply repays all the time one can
give while Carcassonne is a disappointment from the time one enters its
inner portals.
There is another name, Agnes of Sorel, connected with Loches,--the
only mortal who ever produced one manly act in the weak Charles VII.
All the good of his reign appears to be traceable to her influence and
it is easily believed that she could not be acceptable to the dark
spirit of Louis XI. Insulted and driven from the Court, she died, many
assert by poison from his agents. She left a large dower to the Church
of St. Ours here, and there she was buried. In the succeeding reign,
the monks, after having secured the inheritance, alleging scruples as
to her life, requested permission to remove her remains, which Louis
granted, provided the inheritance was returned. That placed a different
light upon the matter and she rested in peace until the Revolution
scattered her ashes to the winds. Her tomb now stands in one of the
towers of the Royal Palace. If that face is a portrait, she had claim
to some of the beauty attributed to her,--of her good influence over
the weak king there is no doubt.
In the history of France, how insignificant a part her queens have
generally played and how important that of many of these "lights o'
love." One hears nothing of the Queen of this Charles VII., but how
much of this Mistress Agnes. In the case of Louis XI. there would seem
to have been no woman of importance though he had a queen--Did that
figure of leather ever know passion or love?
With Louis XII. one does hear of the Queen, Anne of Brittany. But
with Francis I. it is all Diane de Poitiers, and again the same Diane
with his son Henry II. Poor little Francis II. knew none save his
Queen, Mary of Scots, and it was not until after his death that Queen
Catherine de Medici came to the front on the stage of France. With
Henry IV. and all the Louis, save one, we hear much of the mistresses,
little of the queens, unless there be a touch of wickedness, as with
Maria de Medici. True, there was Anne of Austria, but she came forward
only when a widow and as regent. It is difficult to remember even
the names of the queens of Louis XIV. and XV., but none forget La
Vallière, Montespan, Maintenon, Pompadour and du Barry,--women who
had so greatly to do with hastening the downfall of the throne and
producing the horrors of the Revolution, when again a queen comes into
view and we stand with bowed heads as Marie Antoinette moves to her
doom.
In all the long years from the time of Charles VII. until to-day there
was but one of the royal favourites, his own Agnes of Sorel, who
exerted her powers for good. As I stand in the old tower to-day gazing
down upon her graven image, I quietly blow the dust away and leave a
flower.
Louis XI. ended the feudal period by breaking the power of the
independent barons and establishing that of royalty. The traveller from
Orleans to Blois may notice to-day opposite Meung the heavy square
masses of the Church of Notre Dame de Cléry. There Louis XI. built his
own grave and was wont to occupy it now and then during life, though
he did not rest there for many years after his death as the tomb was
destroyed by the Huguenots in 1563.
Entering our car, we are off and away, rattling through the narrow
streets, and gliding out on to the wide high-road for Tours. It
was near Tours at "Plessis-lès-Tours" that Louis XI. met the grim
destroyer. I have before this fully described that Château,[3] and will
pass it now.
[3] In _Palaces and Prisons of Mary Queen of Scots_. G. P. Putnam's
Sons: New York and London.