The rebellion of the Constable de Bourbon against Francis I, in 1523, implicated two more bishops, those of Puy and Autun. Bourbon aspired to create an independent kingdom in the heart of France and was backed by the Emperor Charles V. The Sieur de Brézé, Seneschal of Normandy, the husband of the famous Diane de Poitiers, revealed the conspiracy to the King, Francis I, unwittingly implicating Jean de Poitiers, his father-in-law. Bourbon, flying to one of his fortified castles, sent the Bishop of Autun to plead for him with the King, who only arrested the messenger. Bourbon, continuing his flight, stopped a night at Puy in Auvergne, and this dragged in the second bishop. Jean de Poitiers, Seigneur de St. Vallier, was also thrown into Loches, whence the prisoner appealed to his daughter and his son-in-law. “Madame,” he wrote to Diane, “here am I arrived at Loches as badly handled as any prisoner could be. I beg of you to have so much pity as to come and visit your poor father.” Diane strove hard with the pitiless king, who only pressed on the trial, urging the judges to elicit promptly all the particulars and the names of the conspirators, if necessary by torture. St. Vallier’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment, “between four walls of solid masonry with but one small slit of window.” The Constable de Bourbon made St. Vallier’s release a condition of submission, and Diane de Poitiers, ever earnestly begging for mercy, won pardon at length, which she took in person to her father’s gloomy cell, where his hair had turned white in the continual darkness.
The wretched inmates of Loches succeeded each other, reign after reign in an interminable procession. One of the most ill-used was de Rochechouart, nephew of the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, who was mixed up in a court intrigue in 1633 and detained in Loches with no proof against him in the hopes of extorting a confession.
Mont St. Michel as a State prison is of still greater antiquity than Loches, far older than the stronghold for which it was admirably suited by its isolated situation on the barren sea shore. It is still girt round with mediæval walls from which rise tall towers proclaiming its defensive strength. Its church and Benedictine monastery are of ancient foundation, dating back to the eighth century. It was taken under the especial protection of Duke Rollo and contributed shipping for the invading hosts of William the Conqueror. Later, in the long conflict with the English, when their hosts over-ran Normandy, Mont St. Michel was the only fortress which held out for the French king. The origin of its dungeons and oubliettes is lost in antiquity. It had its cage like Loches, built of metal bars, but for these solid wooden beams were afterwards substituted.
Modern sentiment hangs about the citadel of Ham near Amiens, as the prison house of Louis Napoleon and his companions, Generals Cavaignac, Changarnier and Lamoricière, after his raid upon Boulogne, in 1830, when he prematurely attempted to seize supreme power in France and ignominiously failed. Ham had been a place of durance for political purposes from the earliest times. There was a castle before the thirteenth century and one was erected on the same site in 1470 by the Count St. Pol, whom Louis XI beheaded. The motto of the family “Mon mieux” (my best) may still be read engraved over the gateway. Another version is to the effect that St. Pol was committed to the Bastile and suffered within that fortress-gaol. He appears to have been a restless malcontent forever concerned in the intrigues of his time, serving many masters and betraying all in turn. He gave allegiance now to France, now England, now Burgundy and Lorraine, but aimed secretly to make himself an independent prince trusting to his great wealth, his ambitious self-seeking activity and his unfailing perfidies. In the end the indignant sovereigns turned upon him and agreed to punish him. St. Pol finding himself in jeopardy fled from France after seeking for a safe conduct through Burgundy. Charles the Bold replied by seizing his person and handing him over to Louis XI, who had claimed the prisoner. “I want a head like his to control a certain business in hand; his body I can do without and you may keep it,” was Louis’s request. St. Pol, according to this account, was executed on the Place de la Grève. It may be recalled that Ham was also for a time the prison of Joan of Arc; and many more political prisoners, princes, marshals of France, and ministers of state were lodged there.
The smiling verdant valley of the Loire, which flows through the historic province of Touraine, is rich in ancient strongholds that preserve the memories of mediæval France. It was the home of those powerful feudal lords, the turbulent vassals who so long contended for independence with their titular masters, weak sovereigns too often unable to keep them in subjection. They raised the round towers and square impregnable donjons, resisting capture in the days before siege artillery, all of which have their gruesome history, their painful records showing the base uses which they served, giving effect to the wicked will of heartless, unprincipled tyrants.
Thus, as we descend the river, we come to Blois, with its spacious castle at once formidable and palatial, stained with many blood-thirsty deeds when vicious and unscrupulous kings held their court there. Great personages were there imprisoned and sometimes assassinated. At first the fief of the Counts of Blois, it later passed into the possession of the crown and became the particular property of the dukes of Orleans. It was the favorite residence of that duke who became King Louis XII of France, and his second queen, Anne of Brittany. His son, Francis I, enlarged and beautified it, and his son again, Henry II, married a wife, Catherine de Medicis, who was long associated with Blois and brought much evil upon it. Catherine is one of the blackest female figures in French history; “niece of a pope, mother of four Valois, a Queen of France, widow of an ardent enemy of the Huguenots, an Italian Catholic, above all a Medicis,” hers was a dissolute wicked life, her hands steeped in blood, her moral character a reproach to womankind. Her favorite device was “odiate e aspettate,” “hate and wait,” and when she called anyone “friend” it boded ill for him; she was already plotting his ruin. She no doubt inspired, and is to be held responsible for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the murder of the Duc de Guise in this very castle of Blois was largely her doing. It was one of the worst of the many crimes committed in the shameful reign of her son Henry III, the contemptible king with his unnatural affections, his effeminate love of female attire, his little dogs, his loathsome favorites and his nauseating mockeries of holiness. His court was a perpetual scene of intrigue, conspiracy, superstition, the lowest vices, cowardly assassinations and murderous duels. One of the most infamous of these was a fight between three of his particular associates and three of the Guises, when four of the combatants were killed.
The famous league of the “Sixteen,” headed by the Duc de Guise, would have carried Henry III back to Paris and held him there a prisoner, but the King was resolved to strike a blow on his own behalf and determined to kill Guise. The States General was sitting at Blois and Guise was there taking the leading part. The famous Crillon, one of his bravest soldiers, was invited to do the deed but refused, saying he was a soldier and not an executioner. Then one of Henry’s personal attendants offered his services with the forty-five guards, and it was arranged that the murder should be committed in the King’s private cabinet. Guise was summoned to an early council, but the previous night he had been cautioned by a letter placed under his napkin. “He would not dare,” Guise wrote underneath the letter and threw it under the table. Next morning he proceeded to the cabinet undeterred. The King had issued daggers to his guards, saying, “Guise or I must die,” and went to his prayers. When Guise lifted the curtain admitting him into the cabinet one of the guards stabbed him in the breast. A fierce struggle ensued, in which the Duke dragged his murderers round the room before they could dispatch him. “The beast is dead, so is the poison,” was the King’s heartless remark, and he ran to tell his mother that he was “once more master of France.” This cowardly act did not serve the King, for it stirred up the people of Paris, who vowed vengeance. Henry at once made overtures to the Huguenots and next year fell a victim to the knife of a fanatic monk at Saint Clou.
Blois ceased to be the seat of the Court after Henry III. Louis XIII, when he came to the throne, imprisoned his mother Marie de Medicis there. It was a time of great political stress when executions were frequent, and much sympathy was felt for Marie de Medicis. A plot was set on foot to release her from Blois. A party of friends arranged the escape. She descended from her window by a rope ladder, accompanied by a single waiting-woman. Many accidents supervened: there was no carriage, the royal jewels had been overlooked, time was lost in searching for the first and recovering the second, but at length Marie was free to continue her criminal machinations. Her chief ally was Gaston d’Orleans, who came eventually to live and die on his estate at Blois. He was a cowardly, self indulgent prince but had a remarkable daughter, Marie de Montpensier, commonly called “La Grande Mademoiselle,” who was the heroine of many stirring adventures, some of which will be told later on.
Not far from Blois are Chambord, an ancient fortress, first transformed into a hunting lodge and later into a magnificent palace, a perfect wilderness of dressed stone; Chaumont, the birth-place of Cardinal d’Amboise and at one time the property of Catherine de Medicis; Amboise, the scene of the great Huguenot massacre of which more on a later page; Chenonceaux, Henri II’s gift to Diane de Poitiers, which Catherine took from her, and in which Mary Queen of Scots spent a part of her early married life; Langeais, an Angevin fortress of the middle ages; Azay-le-Rideau, a perfect Renaissance chateau; Fontevrault, where several Plantagenet kings found burial, and Chinon, a triple castle now irretrievably ruined, to which Jeanne d’Arc came seeking audience of the King, when Charles VII formally presented her with a suit of knight’s armor and girt on her the famous sword, said to have been picked up by Charles Martel on the Field of Tours after that momentous victory which checked the Moorish invasion, and but for which the dominion of Islam would probably have embraced western Europe.
Two other remarkable prison castles must be mentioned here, Amboise and Angers. The first named is still a conspicuous object in a now peaceful neighborhood, but it offers few traces of antiquity, although it is full of bloody traditions. Its most terrible memory is that of the Amboise conspiracy organised by the Huguenots in 1560, and intended to remove the young king, Francis II, from the close guardianship of the Guises. The real leader was the Prince de Condé, known as “the silent captain.” The ostensible chief was a Protestant gentleman of Perigord, named Renaudie, a resolute, intelligent man, stained with an evil record, having been once sentenced and imprisoned for the crime of forgery. He was to appear suddenly at the castle at the head of fifteen hundred devoted followers, surprise the Guises and seize the person of the young king. One of their accomplices, a lawyer, or according to another account, a certain Captain Lignières, was alarmed and betrayed the conspirators. Preparations were secretly made for defence, Renaudie was met with an armed force and killed on the spot, and his party made prisoners by lots, as they appeared. All were forthwith executed, innocent and guilty, even the peasants on their way to market. They were hanged, decapitated or drowned. The court of the castle and the streets of the town ran with blood until the executioners, sated with the slaughter, took to sewing up the survivors in sacks and throwing them into the river from the bridge garnished with gibbets, and ghastly heads impaled on pikes. A balcony to this day known as the “Grille aux Huguenots” still exists, on which Catherine de Medicis and her three sons, Francis II, the reigning monarch, Charles, afterwards the ninth king of that name, and Henry II, witnessed the massacre in full court dress. Mary, Queen of Scots, the youthful bride of her still younger husband, was also present. The Prince de Condé had been denounced, but there was no positive evidence against him and he stoutly denied his guilt, and in the presence of the whole court challenged any accuser to single combat. No one took up the glove and he remained free until a fresh conspiracy, stimulated by detestation of the atrocities committed by the Guises, seriously compromised the prince. Condé was arrested at Orleans, found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. He was saved by the death of Francis. Mary Stuart afterward returned to Scotland to pass through many stormy adventures and end her life on the scaffold.