A few years later the prosperity of Les Baux departed. Louis XIII sent troops against its last seigneur, Antoine de Villeneuve, who was an adherent of the Duke of Orleans, and Richelieu ordered the final destruction of the castle.
This time the work was done thoroughly. But the stout old pile made a resistance of its own. It took a month to demolish it, and gunpowder had to be used to blow it up. And even now there is a great deal of it left.
After that Les Baux steadily declined until it became no more than a refuge for a handful of peasants, who squatted amongst the ruins, fed their sheep where the grass grew over the castle courts, and cultivated a few fields outside. But it kept one church out of its five or six, and has always had some sort of corporate life. It is a little more prosperous now, because of its visitors; but compared with its rich past the life is a mere trickle, and only the ruins remain to tell of what it once was.
CHAPTER X
Les Baux (continued)
Mr. Cook had written of the inn at Les Baux that lunch was "a perilous adventure, and any other form of hospitality impossible." This did not frighten me, because when one takes a pack on one's back one drops a good many prejudices. Read what the inns were like when Smollett travelled through France, or Casanova, or Arthur Young. Probably the inn at Les Baux, when Mr. Cook visited it, would have seemed to an eighteenth century traveller a most desirable place of entertainment. At any rate, the reproach is now removed altogether, for there is an excellent inn at Les Baux. It is called the Hôtel de la Reine Jeanne.
The other inn is called the "Hôtel de Monte Carlo," which recalls a curious episode in the history of Les Baux—the last in its long history.
It was after Richelieu had wrecked it, and was caused, says Mr. Cook, by the ambition of Spain to become possessed of Monte Carlo.