Vanished Halls and Cathedrals of France

by George Wharton Edwards

Château: Couey

[Original]

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.