THE CASTLE OF COUCY, NEAR LAON.

COUCY-LE-CHÂTEAU, town and castle, are built upon and completely occupy the somewhat irregularly-shaped but level summit of a promontory of chalk, the eastern part or root of which is connected with the high land of the upper forest of Coucy, while towards the north and west the termination of the platform stands out boldly and abruptly, from 150 feet to 200 feet above the fertile valleys on either hand, whence spring the tributary waters of the Lette, a stream which flows down from the ancient city of Laon to reach the Oise at Manicamp.

The valleys immediately below and commanded by the castle bear marks of high and early cultivation, and no doubt contributed largely to its support. More distant, chiefly on the eastern and northern sides, are the immense woodland tracts of the high and low forests of Coucy, St. Gobain, and Monceau, while to the south are those of Pinon and Mostier. Occupying fertile spots amidst these forests were the abbeys of Nogent, St. Nicholas, Barizy, and Prémontre, where was the burial-place of the De Coucys, and the remains of which religious houses are interspersed with those of the castles of St. Gobain, Folembray, Anizy, La Fère, Pinon, and many others, showing the value attached to this tract of country by the jealousy displayed in its defence.

The etymology of Coucy has not been explained. The district in which it stands was known as Le Mege in the sixth century, and Coucy was probably included in that part of it granted by Clovis to St. Remi for the archiepiscopal see of Reims, a.d. 500. In 909 it was in the hands of Archbishop Hervé, who, moved by the rising power of the Norman, here first built the castle known henceforward as Coucy.

Whatever may have been the particulars of this fortress, its area must have been identical with that of the latter work, governed by the configuration of the ground; and, whatever may have been its construction, its position could not but endow it with strength and importance. It became at once a place of note. Here, Hervé, Count of Vermandois, imprisoned Charles the Simple, whom he sold to his rival king for the county of Laon. Nevertheless, in 930, Hervé was forced to give up Coucy to Boson, brother to Raoul, king of France. Boson was slain before St. Quentin in 931, and, after a century of vicissitudes, the domain, held by a mere quit-rent of the Church, was in 1037 the signory of Alberic, the founder of the baronial name of Coucy. It is uncertain whether Alberic was of the family of Eudo de Chartres or that of the Counts of Vermandois. By marriage he added Amiens and its adjacent castle of Bôves to Coucy, and is thought to have founded the abbey of Nogent-sous-Coucy.

Alberic was succeeded by his son Enguerrand, Sieur de Coucy, Count of Amiens, and Lord of Bôves. He married Ada, heiress of Letard de Roucy, Lord of Marle, second son of Gilbert, Count of Reims, with whom he acquired Marle and La Fère. He—or more probably his son—first assumed the well-known armorial bearings, “Barry of 6, vaire and gules.” He died 1116, leaving Thomas.

Thomas de Marle, de Coucy, his son and successor, long in rebellion against his father, bore a bad name for violence. He lost Amiens; but, again by marriage, acquired Crécy-sur-Serre and Nogent. He died 1130.

Enguerrand II., known as Le Sire de Coucy—this title, it is said, denoting the lord of an allodial fief—held also Marle, Crécy, Vervins, Pinon, and La Fère, in which latter castle he defended himself with success against Louis le Gros and Raoul, Count of Vermandois, in 1132. His reign was one of peace and justice.

This Enguerrand is said to have slain in personal combat a ferocious beast called a lion that infested the neighbourhood; and this tale is no doubt the origin of the lions which were used by the family as crest and supporters. Such tales were common in the twelfth century, only the scene of the exploit was usually more safely laid in Palestine. This combat was commemorated in a bas-relief over the door of the keep at Coucy, and was probably the foundation of a singular ceremony which only ceased at the Revolution. Thrice annually, at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, the Abbot of Nogent, or his attorney, entered Coucy by the lower gate, a whip in his hand and mounted upon a crop-eared and docktailed bay. On his poitrel was suspended a seed-bag of white linen filled with wheat, and in a basket certain crescent-shaped cakes stuffed with minced veal, cooked in oil, and called rissoles, probably the earliest mention of a dish which has descended to our own times.

Behind the abbot came a red dog, also with cropped ears and tail, and having a rissole suspended from his neck. This singular procession then entered the castle, and at the base of the keep the abbot made the circuit of a central and three lesser couchant lions there carved in stone, and afterwards embraced the larger beast. This done, he offered the cakes in homage to the lord, who distributed them to the people, and then witnessed the record of the homage by affixing to it a special seal, representing a mitred and crosiered abbot, having for feet the hoofs of a buck. A representation of this ceremony in tapestry long adorned the walls of the castle, and is thought to have been taken into Lorraine after the marriage of a later Coucy with a daughter of that house.

Enguerrand II. died while on a crusade in Palestine about 1148; but his body was laid in his abbey of Prémontre, near the castle, where his effigy remained in 1682.

Raoul de Coucy, son and successor, was under age at his father’s death. He married, about 1169, Agnes of Hainault; and secondly, Alix, niece of Louis-le-Jeune, and sister of Robert de Dreux. By this match he connected himself with the blood royal. He accompanied Philip Augustus to Palestine in 1188, and fell before the walls of Acre in 1191. He was buried at Foigny, and his son by Alix was his successor.

Enguerrand III., called the Great, Lord of Montmirail, Oisy, Crèvecour, la Ferté-Ancoul, la Ferté-Gaucher, Vicomte de Meaux, and Châtelan of Cambrai. He was the founder of the present castle, and at the same time walled in the considerable town that had risen under the protection of his ancestors. As he was a child at his accession, his mother administered the signory, and conceded a charter of liberties to the town in 1197, which he confirmed when of age. In 1200, more majorum, he attacked the property of the Church of Reims. In 1210, he joined the Count of Vermandois in the first crusade against the Albigenses, and again in 1219 and 1226; then assisting at the siege of Toulouse and the taking of Avignon. He distinguished himself also at the battle of Bovines.

Enguerrand, though not wanting in territorial power, exercised an influence far beyond that due to wealth or breadth of possessions, and which was in great measure personal. He appears to have submitted with an ill grace to the government of Queen Blanche during the minority of St. Louis, and is said to have even contemplated regal power. However this may be, the consciousness of his influence, no doubt, led him to erect the Castle of Coucy, it is thought, between 1225–1230; and it maybe that in so doing he proposed to himself to cast into the shade the grand tower of the Louvre, the work, a few years before, of Philip Augustus. He is also said to have rebuilt his other castles of St. Gobain, Assis, Marle, Folembrai, and St. Aubyn, and the Hôtel Coucy at Paris.

In 1244, he was in the confidence of St. Louis, and attended a conference of nobles at Chinon, where he supported the plan of a descent upon England; but while assembling his vassals for this purpose he was flung from his horse and killed by his own sword. Of his children by Marie de Montmirail, Raoul II., who fell in the crusade of 1250, and Enguerrand IV., became successively Sieurs de Coucy; but both died childless, and with the last closed the male line of these great barons. Alix, half-sister to the last lords, married Arnoul, Count de Guines. Enguerrand the Great had also a daughter, Mary, who in 1239 became the second wife of Alexander II. of Scotland, and the mother of Alexander III. Mary was a very remarkable person, and exercised the duties of guardian to her son in difficult times in a very efficient manner, devising and executing a vigorous policy of her own.

Arnold Comte de Guines sold Guines to Philip le Hardi in 1282. Alix de Coucy, his wife, was daughter of Enguerrand III. by Marie Dame d’Oisy, his third wife. They had Enguerrand V. de Guines, Sire de Coucy, &c., who lived at the court of his cousin-german, Alexander III., in Scotland, where he married, before 1285, Christine de Baliol. He died 1321.

William, his son and heir, married Isabel, daughter of Guy de Chatillon, Comte de St. Pol. He died 1335, and was succeeded by Enguerrand VI., who married Catherine, daughter of Leopold, Duke of Austria. This baron took part in the defence of his province against Edward III., and fell at the battle of Crécy, in 1346, leaving his son an infant.

Enguerrand VII., better known in England as Ingelram de Coucy, was one of the greatest and most powerful barons of his race and age, and, in a warlike age, celebrated as a military leader. He commenced his public life by a war of extermination against the insurgent Jacquerie. He was then one of the hostages in England for King John, and there married Isabel, daughter of Edward III., became a Knight of the Garter (39th on the list), and in 1366 was created Earl of Bedford. The effect, perhaps the price, of these honours was his neutrality in the war between France and England. He claimed the duchy of Austria, and raised 60,000 condottieri to support his rights, but in this he was unsuccessful.

After the death of Edward III. he returned the insignia of the Garter to his successor, and took part with France. Upon Du Guesclin’s death, he was offered, and declined, the sword of Constable of France, but became governor of Picardy. His advice to the king was to anticipate the English attacks.

His second wife was a daughter of the Duke of Lorraine. In 1382, he composed, by fair words, the insurrection of the Maillotins, at Paris. In Picardy he was scarcely less lenient. Doutard, one of their leaders, he sentenced to death, but at the gallow’s foot he was pardoned, by the custom of Picardy, because a woman from the crowd consented to marry him,—a singular legal juxtaposition of hanging and matrimony. Enguerrand took part in the campaign of Charles VI. against Ghent, in which Van Artevelde was killed; and in the following year, after putting down an insurrection at Paris, he joined the war in Flanders, where he won the high approbation of Froissart.

He then went to Italy, and fought at the battle of Arezzo, for which he received the charge of Grand Butler of France. Shortly afterwards, he was prominent in the military and naval preparations for a descent upon England, and seems to have commanded a division of the fleet, and to have been driven upon the coast of Scotland.

In 1390 he took part in the African expedition, landing at Carthage. The closing act of his life was the unsuccessful crusade against Sultan Bajazet, upon his invasion of Hungary, and the battle of Nicopolis in 1396, when Enguerrand was defeated and made prisoner, and so died in 1397, aged 57, the last male of the second line of the Sires of Coucy.

Upon his death, Louis Duke of Orleans obtained possession of the Coucy estates, under cover of a purchase from the heir female. Upon the death of Louis, in 1465, Duke Charles succeeded, and upon his accession to the throne of France as Louis XII., in 1498, Coucy became Crown property, and ceased to retain any individuality, or to be the seat of an independent family. As an appanage of the Crown it was granted to the successive families of Orleans, and was thus held by Égalité at the Revolution. It is at present a part of the State domains, and in consequence received a share of the consideration with which the late Emperor regarded all public monuments, and has been most judiciously preserved from further decay by M. Viollet-le-Duc, from whose survey the annexed plan has been made.

The castle occupies the north-western extremity of the platform, of which the remainder is occupied by the town. Upon three sides the natural defence is the steep hill-side, the upper 30 feet or 40 feet of which are rendered vertical by art, and faced with masonry. The (wholly artificial) defences of the town on the south front are a deep ditch, extending from cliff to cliff, and dividing the town from the castle, within which is a curtain wall, flanked at its ends by two round towers containing vaulted chambers, and with a central gatehouse, also so flanked.

The castle is composed of a keep, an inner, and an outer ward. The outer, about thrice the area of the inner ward, intervenes between the inner ward and the town. Its narrow south front has been described. Towards the north-east the hill is very steep, and the revetment wall on this face is not reinforced by buttresses or flanking towers. On the opposite face the ground is far less steep, and the platform projects in a bold salient towards the south-west, the revetment of which is strengthened by eight mural towers or bastions, some half-round and the others rectangular. The south wall is lofty, the others were probably mere parapets. The great gatehouse, or “Porte de Maître Odon,” is now much broken down. The portal arch was pointed, as are two lateral arches for the guard. The square groove of one portcullis remains. The gatehouse seems to have been of the usual rectangular plan, having a central portal arch and passage, and two exterior half-round flanking towers. In this outward ward are to be traced very considerable foundations, and here are found fragments of piers and arch stones, and carved blocks, showing that the buildings erected as stables and barracks for the castellan, and probably, in times of peace, for the lord, were very considerable, and of a handsome character. Here also are the foundations of a church, recently cleared out. They show a single nave, with a semicircular apse, and a transept, the two arms of which have, on their eastern sides, two smaller apses, the three ranging nearly in a line. The building is about 100 feet long by 30 feet broad; has a double west door, and five windows of a side, besides three in the apse and three in each limb of the transept. From its plan and proportions this church has been regarded as part of the original castle, and the only part now remaining. Its actual date is, however, probably of the eleventh century.

The inner or north end of this ward abuts upon the inner ward. This front is occupied by a broad and deep dry ditch, concave towards the outer ward, having a walled scarp and counterscarp, and crossed at each end by the exterior enceinte wall of the place.

COUCY CASTLE, FRANCE.—Plan.

The inner ward, or castle proper, is four-sided. The east face, of 130 yards, and north face, of 60 yards, are both straight, and set at right angles. The east front, of 70 yards, is set at an obtuse angle to the north, but is also straight. Thus breadth is given to the south front, which is 130 yards. This front is also straight, but about five-sevenths of its central part is occupied by the convexity of the great tower and its chemise, which are placed upon the line of the curtain.

The east, west, and north fronts are towards the field, and are formed by facing the scarped rock with masonry, so that they stand 30 feet to 40 feet high to the level of the terre-plein, above which rises the curtain-wall. The south front is covered by the ditch already described, which is segmental in plan, with vertical sides. Near its east end this ditch is expanded from 60 feet to 90 feet, and was there traversed by a long drawbridge, which rested upon three detached rectangular piers, of which the inner one was the largest, and contained two lateral places of arms, and no doubt carried a tower. This bridge led up to the main gate. It is now replaced by a causeway.

At the four angles of the ward are four equal drum towers, 60 feet in diameter, and 105 feet high from the exterior base. They are remarkable for their size and boldness, being engaged only by one-fifth of their circumference. These towers rise from the rock, and contain two domed stages below the terre-plein level. These are entered by a circular hole or eye in the centre of each vault. The terre-plein level of each is a hexagonal chamber, vaulted, having five recesses, of which four are pierced as loops. The entrance is in the gorge, with two lateral passages, one leading to a garderobe and one to a well-stair, ascending to the summit.

The chamber above is similar, but the loops are placed between instead of over those below; and thus the towers have been preserved from those vertical fissures so common when a series of loops or windows occur, as they usually do, in one vertical line. By this arrangement, also, the scope of the archers defending the tower is much increased, every point within arrow range being exposed to fire. There are three floors above the ground-level, or five in all. All are vaulted. A line of corbels at the present summit shows that they were originally defended by a bretasche.

Nearly in the centre of the east face was a small half-round bastion with flat sides, 30 feet in diameter and about 20 feet projection.

Standing in the court, no part of the curtain is visible. Along the central 180 feet of the east front is a range of buildings, called offices, about 30 feet deep, and having three well-staircases, serving the first and second floor, now destroyed. At the south end the space between the curtain and the tower chemise, about 60 feet by 80 feet, is occupied by three aisles of vaulting, each of three bays. The centre of these is the main entrance, or continued portal arch. The lateral bays are for warders and soldiery in charge of the gate. There were two stories above this, now destroyed.

Along the north front was originally a vaulted arcade, 45 feet broad, composed of four bays. To this has been added, in front, an arcade of three arches, open towards the court, and upon the platform thus gained have been constructed a terrace and a range of state rooms, of which the principal is the ladies’ hall, or Salle des Preuses, so named from the medallions of nine celebrated women which adorned the great chimney piece. In the exterior was a sort of oriel boudoir, and large windows towards the field. Above this was another story, to construct which the curtain was raised. These buildings were the addition of the Duke of Orleans. A large well-stair, also an addition, led from the court to these apartments.

The west side also has a high curtain, against which is constructed a magnificent chamber, 45 feet broad by 470 feet long, down the centre of which stands a line of ten columns, dividing the space into eleven vaulted and groined bays, of which the northern pair are cut off as a private cellar. On the east side of this chamber are four doors, two near the centre opening into the crypt of the chapel, one south of this, probably the main entrance, and one near the south end, opening into what appear to have been the kitchens, and which lie between this splendid range of magazines and the great tower. Connected with the kitchens are three courts, and a staircase descending to the cellars.

Below the chamber is another of equal size excavated in the chalk, as a cellar, probably about the finest and most spacious ever constructed.

Above, on the first floor, or third stage, was the great hall of the castle, called, from its nine effigies of heroes, La Salle des Preux. It had a wooden roof, two large fireplaces, and a large window at the south end, below which a small door opened upon a light wooden bridge, which dropped upon the curtain of the outer ward, just above the postern.

The chapel was a rectangular building, 60 feet east and west, by 36 feet north and south. It projected from the hall into the court. It was composed of two parallel aisles, vaulted, each in four bays. Its south-east angle was engaged with the chemise of the great tower. Its south-west angle was free, and had two buttresses set on at right angles. This chapel is now destroyed to its foundations. It opened from the great hall.

The keep, or great tower, is the boast of Coucy, and deservedly so, being one of the finest towers in the world, and no doubt the largest and most complete single military building.

It is a plain tower, perfectly cylindrical, of excellent ashlar workmanship, 100 feet diameter at base and summit, and 200 feet high. It rises out of a paved moat, the base being about 12 feet below the level of the terre-plein, and is entered by a drawbridge from the level, all below being solid.

Including the basement, the tower contains three stories. The ground floor, on the level of the terre-plein, is entered by a drawbridge laid across the ditch, and which, when raised, covered a small square-headed portal, under a pointed arch, the entrance to a passage directly piercing the wall. The passage has an interior machicolation and a portcullis, both worked from a small chamber in the wall above, which also received the chains of the bridge. Within the portcullis was a stout door barred within, and, on the left and right, passages, one to a mural garderobe with an exterior loop, the other leading to a well-stair, which served the upper rooms and led to the ramparts.

The entrance passage leads direct into a duodecagonal chamber of about 60 feet diameter, having a recess in each floor for stores, one occupied by the entrance, one by a large well, now about 90 feet deep and formerly 200 feet, and one by a chimney.

Each pier is faced by a column, from which springs a rib, the twelve meeting in the centre at an eye, and supporting the vault. Each vaulting cell has a pointed gable, of which two are pierced for light.

The first floor is of the same figure and diameter, and vaulted in a similar manner. One of its recesses is closed by a fireplace with an oven behind it; one gives passage to a very narrow postern, the plank bridge from which drops upon the rampart of the chemise wall, and three are pierced by small windows. One of these window recesses is entered laterally by a small passage from the adjacent recess. This is of fifteenth-century work, made when the recess was walled up to serve as a separate chamber. Another recess has also a lateral passage, entering a small mural garderobe, looped from the outside. In one recess are two windows, one above the other.

The second floor, resembling the other in plan and diameter at its floor level, has a different arrangement at a height of 12 feet. Here the piers cease, and behind, between them and the outer shell of wall, is a gallery, entered by the regular well-stair, but each of the eleven other compartments of which forms a box like that of a theatre, looking down upon the central pit or floor. Two of these boxes are occupied by the detached flues of the two chimneys from below, and two are lighted by windows, which, with the central eye, form the whole and very insufficient light. In this chamber, the next below the battlements, the commander could collect and address a very numerous garrison.

The third floor, that of the ramparts, and open above, is contained within a thick and lofty parapet wall about 10 feet high, and pierced by twenty-four lancet arches and as many intermediate loops. Above these the wall is surmounted by a grand coping, which overhangs both ways about thrice the thickness of the wall, and then slopes upwards into a ridge. It was upon this ridge that were laid the roofing rafters of the bretasche gallery, which enclosed the wall inside and outside. The former was merely as a counterpoise. The latter was of two stories, and rested its main struts upon a line of forty-eight grand corbels, which remain on the exterior face of the wall at the rampart level. The flues appeared above the roof, and three large and highly-crocketed pinnacles were placed astride on the crest of the wall. The stone vault of the upper chamber was covered with lead, with occasional gutter openings outwards.

Nothing can be grander than the conception of this tower, nothing more complete than the execution of its details. All is gigantesque, as though for a race above the ordinary stature of man, and the walls within were overlaid with a fine cement, and painted with care. The design of the sculpture is bold and masculine, as becomes a military building; but all is in excellent taste, and admirably executed.

The walls of the keep are tied with chain-courses of timber, laid in mortar, in the centre of the work, as was the custom in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The timber is exposed below some of the loops. In the upper floors were embedded radiating ties, also of wood.

Two lines of square putlog-holes are seen on the exterior of the keep. They ascend in a spiral, or a right-handed screw, and indicate the manner in which the building was constructed. Horizontal beams, projecting from the upper row, carried the inclined plane or roadway up which the materials were dragged, and these were supported by struts, the feet of which rested in the lower row.

There remains to be described only the chemise, or work designed to cover the base of the keep from the operations of the miner. It has been seen that the base of the keep was solid, and that it stood in a paved fosse, about 20 feet broad, with vertical sides. The exterior side, or counterscarp, of this fosse was a wall, about 8 feet thick, which divided it from the main exterior ditch of the ward, and rose to the level of the first floor of the keep, say 30 feet. The ordinary ascent to its rampart walk was by a stair within the wall, commencing on the right near the keep entrance. It was also reached from the first floor of the keep by a slight bridge, such as was employed at Rochester, and probably in one or two places in the Tower of London. There was also an access from the other end of the wall, from the rooms over the great gateway.

Outside of and at the base of the salient half of this wall was built against it, at the level of the bottom of the exterior ditch, a covered way or gallery, intended to act as a countermine, and still more completely to frustrate attempts against the keep. The gallery is entered from either end, and in its centre rises a sort of buttress against the wall, in which was contained a wooden stair, by which the people on the rampart could communicate with those in the gallery. In the gallery also was a well, for the use of the kitchens, and in the substance of the wall a garderobe.

From the bottom of the keep ditch issued a postern, defended by gate, portcullis, and machicolation, the two latter connected with a small chamber in the wall; from this a wooden bridge led, in the ditch, to a postern in the west and outer wall of the outer ward.

The castle and town, being of one date and from one design, may be regarded as representing a thirteenth-century fortress of the first class, and of the strongest character, in which the internal arrangements, though palatial, were made completely subordinate to the military character and security of the place. The great feature of the castle is the keep, which commands the whole, in every part, and from its size and strength could be held with confidence after all the other defences had been taken.

The additions of the fifteenth century, consisting of state-rooms, a hall, and various upper stories, intended for the state and attendants of a court, though not extending to the keep, in some degree injure the military character of the place, and take off from the predominating grandeur of that great central feature. These, however, have for the most part fallen away, and what remains is chiefly original work, so that the appearance of the keep and inner ward is in many respects as they were designed by the great baron, who contemned any title less than king, and was content with the severe simplicity of that of “Sire de Coucy.”

The castle in 1652 fell into the hands of Mazarin, who employed Metezeau, son of him who threw up the famous dyke at Rochelle, to render it indefensible. The engineer blew the chemise wall outwards into the ditch, and exploded a heavy charge of powder in each of the towers. The effect of this upon the keep was to clear out the vaulted stages, and to leave the cylinder like the tube of a vast cannon. Thus, with one or two vertical fissures, it stood till our day; but now these have been closed with great care and judgment, and the cylinder has been hooped with iron, in a manner that is scarcely to be observed, and will preserve it indefinitely.

Those who wish to understand the details of this most curious place, and to acquire a complete and comprehensive view of it as a military work, would do well to read the masterly exposition of M. Le Duc, sold upon the spot, and given also in his “Dictionnaire,” under the articles of “Château” and “Donjon.”

The town is also worth a visit. It contains a good church, and its southern gatehouse is a very massive structure. The portal is very narrow, about 9 feet, acutely pointed, and it opens between two drum towers of one-third projection, and of about 100 feet diameter and 60 feet high. The short curtain between them, occupied below by the gateway, above is convex in plan, and supports two bold brackets, upon which lies a stout beam, a part of the original bretasche, and a rare, if not a solitary, instance of a part of such a structure remaining in place.

The drawbridge is replaced by a causeway, but at the base of the gateway are two large square holes, nearly where the axle of the bridge would rest, but closely resembling drains, which they can scarcely be. There are no marks of external defences, save the bretasche. Probably the bridge, when up, acted as a gate. Within the passage, on each side, is a large lateral loop, then two portcullises, and between them a large machicolation. Within the second grate is a gate, and within this the passage is vaulted for about 16 feet. Then follows an open space, of which the roof was of timber, and then a vault. The inner end of the passage is injured, and repaired. Above, over the portal, is a fireplace of enormous size.

This gatehouse is placed in the middle of the curtain which covers the very narrow south-east front of the town. On each side of the gate-towers is a curtain of about 100 feet long, and beyond this a pair of drum mural towers, of half projection. The loops of these towers, like every detail in Coucy, are on a grand scale. Though mere slots, they are 10 feet high, and in three tiers. In front of the wall is a fosse of unusual breadth, wholly artificial, and which, like that of the castle, is dug across the peninsula, from one lateral valley to the other.