My researches in this city after the remains of architectural antiquity of the earlier Norman æra, have hitherto, I own, been attended with little success. I may even go so far as to say, that I have seen nothing in the circular style, for which it would not be easy to find a parallel in most of the large towns in England. On the other hand, the perfection and beauty of the specimens of the pointed style, have equally surprised and delighted me. I will endeavor, however, to take each object in its order, premising that I have been materially assisted in my investigations by M. Le Prevost and M. Rondeau, but especially by the former, one of the most learned antiquaries of Normandy.
Of the fortifications and castellated buildings in Rouen very little indeed is left[[49]], and that little is altogether insignificant; being confined to some fragments of the walls scattered here and there[[50]], and to three circular towers of the plainest construction, the remains of the old castle, built by Philip Augustus in 1204, near to the Porte Bouvreuil, and hence commonly known by the name of the Château de Bouvreuil or le Vieux Château.—It is to the leading part which this city has acted in the history of France, that we must attribute the repeated erection and demolition of its fortifications.
An important event was commemorated by the erection of the old castle, it having been built upon the final annexation of Normandy to the crown of France, in consequence of the weakness of our ill-starred monarch,—John Lackland. The French King seems to have suspected that the citizens retained their fealty to their former sovereign. He intended that his fortress should command and bridle the city, instead of defending it. The town-walls were razed, and the Vieille Tour, the ancient palace of the Norman Dukes, levelled with the ground.—But, as the poet says of language, so it is with castles,—
... "mortalia facta peribunt,
Nec castellorum stet honos et gratia vivax;"
and, in 1590, the fortress raised by Philip Augustus experienced the fate of its predecessors; it was then ruined and dismantled, and the portion which was allowed to stand, was degraded into a jail. Now the three[[51]] towers just mentioned are alone remaining, and these would attract little notice, were it not that one of them bears the name of the Tour de la Pucelle, as having been, in 1430, the place of confinement of the unfortunate Joan of Arc, when she was captured before Compiégne and brought prisoner to Rouen.
It must be stated, however, that the first castle recorded to have existed at Rouen, was built by Rollo, shortly after he had made himself master of Neustria. Its very name is now lost; and all we know concerning it is, that it stood near the quay, at the northern extremity of the town, in the situation subsequently occupied by the Church of St. Pierre du Châtel, and the adjoining monastery of the Cordeliers.
After a lapse of less than fifty years, Rouen saw rising within her walls a second castle, the work of Duke Richard Ist, and long the residence of the Norman sovereigns. This, from a tower of great strength which formed a part of it, and which was not demolished till the year 1204, acquired the appellation of la Vieille Tour; and the name remains to this day, though the building has disappeared.
The space formerly occupied by the scite of it is now covered by the halles, considered the finest in France. The historians of Rouen, in the usual strain of hyperbole, hint that their halles are even the finest in the world[[52]], though they are very inferior to their prototypes at Bruges and Ypres. The hall, or exchange, allotted to the mercers, is two hundred and seventy-two feet in length, by fifty feet wide: those for the drapers and for wool are, each of them, two hundred feet long; and all these are surpassed in size by the corn-hall, whose length extends to three hundred feet. They are built round a large square, the centre of which is occupied by numberless dealers in pottery, old clothes, &c.; and, as the day on which we chanced to visit them was a Friday, when alone they are opened for public business, we found a most lively, curious, and interesting scene.
It was on the top of a stone staircase, the present entry to the halles, that the annual ceremony[[53]] of delivering and pardoning a criminal for the sake of St. Romain, the tutelary protector of Rouen, was performed on Ascension-day, according to a privilege exercised, from time immemorial, by the Chapter of the Cathedral.