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Perhaps the greatest, or at any rate the most indefensible piece of
vandalism perpetrated by the retiring armies of the invader, was the
total annihilation of the great castle of Coucy-le-Château in March of
this year. Coucy castle, legend says, was built upon the site given to
St. Remi by Clovis, in the fulfillment of a condition that the former
should walk around it while the King enjoyed his noonday siesta.
Afterwards it was part of the property of the Chapter of Rheims for
upwards of two hundred years. In the year nine hundred and twenty-nine
King Charles the Simple was imprisoned in its donjon by Herbert, Count
of Vermandois. Enguerrand I, founder of the house of Coucy, received the
castle in fief from the Archbishop of Rheims, and from it departed with
his knights in quest of the Holy Grail and was distinguished in the
Crusades. His descendant, Enguerrand III, who was surnamed the Great,
rebuilt the castle, and when he flouted the authority of the Chapter of
Rheims, and they laid the matter before the king, he answered with the
words: "Je ne puis faire autre chose pour vous que de priere le Sire de
Coucy de ne point vous inquiéter." In the subsequent quarrel with the
Chapter of Lâon, Enguer-rand at the head of his cohort stormed the
Cathedral and carried off the dean a prisoner to Coucy, where he
languished at the pleasure of the fiery knight.
The laws he promulgated and forced upon the barony were called "Le
Coutume de Coucy."
The battle of Bouvignes, in which he performed many acts of prowess and
valor, and also his successes during the Albigensian war of 1209 added
to his great fame as a warrior and caused the league of nobles to
propose the dethronement of Louis IX, then a child, whose crown they
offered to Enguerrand.
So proud were his descendants that they abandoned their other titles
and called themselves simple "de Coucy" and adopted the motto "Roi ne
suys--ne prince, ne duc, ne compte aussi--je suys le Sire de Coucy."
Descendants sold the Château, as it was called, and Jie Seigneurie de
Coucy to Louis d'Orléans in 1400, who made it a duchy, and so amplified
and decorated it that it became noteworthy throughout the realm. In 1411
it was besieged and captured by the royal army, and retained until 1419,
when it was taken by the troops of the Duke of Orleans. In 1423 it
was captured by the English, and again in 1652 by the royal army and
dismantled by order of Mazarin. At the outbreak it was an "historical
monument" kept up by the state as a museum.
Coucy-le-Chateau was one of the greatest and most splendid relics of
the thirteenth century. Nothing remains of it now. It has been utterly
blasted away from the foundations. On the heights is only a series of
great piles of crumpled masonry and pulverized rock. The oldest, the
strongest, the largest and most historic of the castles of Europe is now
only a memory.
So enraged were the French at this piece of wanton destruction, that
they refused to bombard the ruins, even though they knew that the
invader had intrenched machine gunners behind and beneath it.
Instead the infantry, unsupported by artillery, charged across a plain
swept by gun fire and wrested the sacred ruin from the enemy.
So terrific was the assault that the Germans could make no counter
attack.
Before they left the Germans boasted to the French villagers that more
than thirty tons of explosives were used to destroy the castle. So great
was the explosion, the peasants who witnessed it from a distance report
that the great round tower, visible for miles around, seemed to rise
in its vast bulk from the foundations, and slowly vanish in a cloud of
whitish smoke. So fell Coucy. Another crime added to the already long
list against the invader.
The official explanation for its destruction coming from Berlin, is that
"the Castle was not worth more than the life of one German soldier, and
there are plenty of other such castles in southern Germany."
The best view of the great chateau was that from the approach from the
town of Lâon. My sketch shows the ruin in springtime, its battlements
rising from the trees at its base, its magnificent pinkish gray mass
against a sky of heavy white cumulous cloud just after a gentle rain.
The small town nestled below it, and still had some vestiges of the old
walls that formerly protected it.
There was a small inn bearing the grandiose title: "Hotel des Trois
Empereurs," whose landlady cooked for us the best omelette we ever
tasted, and begged us to take her daughter to America with us as "maid
for Madame." The daughter we never saw, by the way. She had gone to Lâon
for the day and we left on the afternoon train before she returned, to
the great chagrin of Madame.
My sketch shows the château on the end of a promontory. This was
approached by a steep and narrow roadway. The great outer court was
of irregular form, with what is styled a "curtain wall," of remarkable
thickness; more than twenty feet, authorities claim. Beneath it was a
subterranean passageway, "so arranged as to be mine proof" (Viollet le
Duc). The wall was supported by ten remarkable towers, three of them
circular in form. There was a great dry moat between this wall and
the keep proper, paved with rounded stones, and there was a drawbridge
lifted by heavy chains which completely shut off the inner court of the
castle when lifted. On the arch of the great portal over this drawbridge
was a rude sculptured scene depicting a combat between one of the "Sires
of Coucy" and a lion which, according to legend, took place in the
nearby wood of Prémontré. Near it was a sort of stone table supported
by three couchant lions upon which stood a lion passant. Here each year,
according to a pretty custom, a young girl of the peasant class gave
cakes and flowers to the townspeople, after which there was a parade by
the local fire company, and in the evening a "retraite aux flambeaux,"
in which the young men carried lighted torches through the town, headed
by a drum and fife.
The tower of the chateau was more than one hundred and fifty feet high
and three hundred feet in circumference. In the drawing by Viollet le
Duc it is shown surmounted by a conical roof, and this must have made it
quite two hundred feet in height.
"The interior was divided into three floors, once covered by ribbed
vaulting, which has now perished. The upper floors and the platform
at the top were reached by a winding staircase in the thickness of the
wall. In the center of each vault was an opening through which men in
armor could be let down quickly. The two lower floors were apparently
used for the arms and provisions of the garrison." (Hare's "Northeastern
France.")
The donjon, according to Viollet le Duc, was the finest specimen in
Europe of mediaeval military architecture.
"Compared with this giant," he says, "the largest towers known appear
mere spindles." So vanished from the face of the earth a great
architectural treasure destroyed simply for revenge.