The castle of Plessis stands to the west of the city of Tours in a vast
plain watered by the Loire and Cher. To reach it, you follow a road
bordered with old mulberry-trees, the remains or heirs of those planted
by Henri IV. in 1607, and renewed in 1690 by Louvois. Impressed by
the terrible memories of Louis XI., turn not your head towards those
trees to look for those hanged by Messire Tristan L’Hermite. Neither be
afraid of finding beneath your feet those man-traps that were planted
in the vicinity of the Castle to catch the curious and the rustics
who ventured upon the lands of His Majesty. To-day the country is
safe and there is nothing to be feared from the Castle, even if it is
not attractive; but, in the Fifteenth Century, a safe-conduct and an
experienced guide were necessary for crossing this dangerous region.
Plessis did not play any part in our national history until the reign
of Louis XI. Until then, it was only an obscure lordship with a little
castle on one of those rocky hillocks that still exist in the vale.
This spot pleasing him much more than the castles of Amboise, Loches,
or Chinon, the King bought it from his chamberlain, Hardouin de Maillé,
in 1463, for the sum of 5,500 gold crowns, and abolished its old name
of Montils. Here he built a castle in the Fifteenth-Century taste,
simple and even severe, for brick largely figured in it, and with a
glass gallery on the interior façade: a dwelling more worthy of a rich
citizen than a King of France. Here, after his accession, Louis XI.
spent the greater part of his life.
Towards the end of the year 1464, the King gathered together the
prelates and principal lords of the realm at Plessis with the pretext
of seeking their advice as to the means of remedying the discontent
that was beginning to break out. In this assembly, Charles, Duke of
Orleans, thought it his duty to hazard a few remonstrances; but Louis
XI. replied to the duke in such harsh and offensive language that the
unfortunate prince died of chagrin at Amboise a few days later. This
attitude of the King drew the nobles into the League of Public Welfare,
and the Duke of Berri placed himself at the head of the discontented.
In order to try to calm them, the King was obliged to call together the
States-General at Tours in 1468.
[Illustration: PLESSIS-LES-TOURS, FRANCE.]
The opposition of the nobles drove Louis XI. towards the middle
classes, not that he had the least democratic tendencies, but because
he felt more at ease among these small people, whose situation rendered
them supple and easy. He always liked to have them about him, and
raised them to the highest dignities, in hatred and defiance of the
high nobility, because they were broken into the practice of affairs
by commerce, and possessed the art, always prized by governments, of
managing the finances skilfully and creating resources at critical
moments. His selections were not always happy: witness La Balue,
whom from a simple clerk he raised to the rank of bishop and even
cardinal, and who betrayed him to the profit of the Duke of Burgundy.
Louis XI., carrying a certain refinement of cruelty even into his most
legitimate vengeance, had the cardinal confined in an iron cage. It is
said that this odious invention was due to La Balue himself, and that
he was the first on whom it was tried. After languishing for some time
in one of the cells at Plessis, the cardinal was transferred to Loches
and then to Montbazon: he did not recover his liberty till 1480, after
a long and hard captivity.
Notwithstanding the success of his policy, Louis XI. had a sad and
morose old age. Separated from his wife and son, more suspicious of
everybody than ever, he shut himself up closely at Plessis and there
redoubled his minute precautions. But two terrible guests whom the
“guard that keeps watch at the barriers of the Louvre” can never stop,
disease and death, soon came to seek him. When he felt the first pangs
of the disease that was to carry him off, he multiplied his vows, acts
of devotion and pilgrimages. Then he sent and fetched all the way from
Calabria a poor hermit named Francisco Paolo, with the hope that the
holy man’s prayers would obtain his recovery. As soon as the King was
informed of his arrival, he ordered the Dauphin to go to meet him with
the chief lords of the court and to receive him with all the respect
due to so saintly a personage; he himself did not think he could do
the saint too much honour and lodged him with his companions in the
castle; but dwelling in the court ill suited the pious hermit and so
they gave him a lodging in the Plessis courtyard. So many precautions
and so many prayers failed to bend Heaven; even the holy ampulla was
powerless. Louis XI. died at the Castle of Plessis, August 30th,
1483, aged sixty, after reigning twenty-two years. His body was first
taken from Plessis to the church of St. Martin of Tours, where it lay
in state for eight days; then it was taken to Notre Dame de Cléry,
the spot which he himself had chosen for his burial. St. Francis had
not been able to perform the miracle of curing the King; but he had
prepared him for his approaching death, and it must be acknowledged
that with a man like Louis XI. this was no small prodigy.
On the death of Louis XI. the court was installed at Plessis for some
time. The Dauphin Charles, born at the Castle of Amboise in 1470,
had reached his legal majority; but intelligence was very slightly
developed in this puny and deformed child. His sister, Anne de Beaujeu,
“fine and subtle, if any one ever was,” says Brantôme, “and the very
image of her father in everything,” unhesitatingly took the regency,
and, to resist the malcontents who wanted to deprive her of it, she
convoked the States-General at Tours for January 1st, 1484. This
celebrated assembly gave firm and vigilant attention to all the affairs
of the realm and obtained quite a sensible reduction of taxes.
Amid the shock of intrigues and diverse ambitions, the lady of Beaujeu
conducted herself with so much address and prudence, that the States
confirmed the last wishes of Louis XI. in her favour.
The little King, as he was called, was not long in shaking off his
sister’s yoke, and began his reign with an act of magnanimity by
himself going in despite of his council and breaking the chains of
the Duke of Orleans. Since the battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, that
prince had been confined in the great tower of Bourges. One evening
with a small suite the young King set out, or rather fled, from the
Castle of Plessis under the pretext of a hunting-party, and went to
free his prisoner. The Regent thought that Charles VIII. was going to
return at the head of her enemies to proscribe her in turn. Happily she
was mistaken. The reconciliation took place at Plessis, and from that
day Louis of Orleans became the most faithful subject of his King.
The Castle of Plessis was a fortunate place for the Duke of Orleans.
After the death of Charles VIII., he was proclaimed King under the
title of Louis XII. and visited Touraine several times and stayed at
the castle where his reconciliation with Anne de Beaujeu had been
effected. There he convoked the States General in 1506, and the
opening of this assembly took place in the great hall of Plessis on
the fourteenth of May. The purpose of this assembly was to free the
King’s word and by the intervention of the nation to break the treaty,
impolitic as well as onerous to France, that had been signed at Lyons
in 1503 and by which Louis XII. had promised to give his daughter
Claude, then only seven years of age, in marriage to Charles of
Luxembourg, who afterwards became the Emperor Charles V. and to whom
she was to take as a dowry the duchies of Milan and Brittany and the
county of Blois. It was a veritable dismemberment of France and the
ruin of that wise policy which by the two marriages of the Duchess
Anne with Charles VIII. and Louis XII. had secured Brittany to France.
The States rose in force against the treaty and demanded the marriage
of François of Valois, then twelve years old, with Claude of France.
These wishes were favourably received, and Cardinal Georges d’Amboise
proceeded to the ceremony of betrothal on the twentieth of May, in the
great hall of Plessis.
Beginning with Francis the First, the court made only rare appearances
at Plessis: the more splendid castles of Chenonceaux, Amboise, Blois,
Chambord, and Fontainebleau received the preference. Henry III.,
however, when tossed about by events, found himself there; and when
Paris embraced the cause of the League, he transferred his little court
thither in 1589. Mayenne followed to attack him. The King of Navarre,
who had recently signed a truce with Henry III., hastened to help him,
and set his troops in battle array on the right bank of the Loire near
Saint Cyr. Thence he sent to say that if His Majesty would deign to
come as far as the faubourg, he would kiss His Majesty’s hands and take
his orders. Henry III., not thinking it wise to go, invited the King
of Navarre to pass the Loire and come to visit him at Plessis. Some of
the Huguenot captains feared a snare; but the Béarnais, as loyal as
he was brave, did not hesitate for a moment and set out accompanied
by his nobles. The interview took place in the great alley of the
park of Plessis, and the crowd was so great that the two kings, with
outstretched arms, had great trouble to approach each other. At last,
having embraced, they mutually exchanged evidences of the most sincere
affection. This touching scene occurred amid the liveliest acclamations
of the public, who saw in this reconciliation of the two princes the
end of the evils of the civil war. The two kings afterwards held a two
hours’ council, and, when the King of Navarre departed, Henry III.
accompanied him as far as the St. Anne bridge.
This was the last memorable event that occurred at Plessis.
Pre-occupied with the ever-increasing political importance of Paris,
Henry IV. left Touraine for good, and transported his court to the
capital, so as to be at hand to supervise and direct its movements.
For a century and a half, the royal garden of Plessis, under the
management of able gardeners, has been the most active and fruitful
school of French horticulture. Here have been produced the “good
Christian pear,” the Queen Claude plum dedicated to the wife of Francis
the First, and doubtless a host of other excellent fruits and charming
flowers. In the Seventeenth Century, the gardens were abandoned, or
transformed into mulberry nurseries: they no longer gave impulse
to local horticulture, but they contributed in another way to the
prosperity of the province. From 1744 to 1762, the Plessis nurseries
distributed not less than four hundred thousand feet of mulberry trees
in Touraine, and which gave a vigorous impulse to the silk industry.
The castle underwent a new transformation in 1778, became a place of
confinement for vagrants. Finally, it was alienated in the Revolution
and partly demolished. By the cruel irony of Fate, the terrible abode
of Louis XI. has become a depot for fertilizers!