Among keeps and castles completed or entirely built in the fourteenth century, Anthyme St. Paul enumerates those of Roquetaillade, Bourdeilles, Polignac, Briquebec, Hardelot, Rambures, Lavardin (the foundations of which were laid in the twelfth century), Montrond, Turenne, Billy, Murat, and Hérisson, the curious keep of Montbard, the keeps of Romefort, Pouzauges, Noirmoutier, and many others.
At the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century Louis of Orleans, son of Charles V., took advantage of the madness of his brother Charles VI. to fortify various positions on which he relied for the furtherance of his ambitious schemes. In 1393 and the years immediately following he acquired various estates in Valois: Montépilloy, Pierrefonds, and La Ferté-Milon, the castle of which he rebuilt entirely. He also bought the domain of Coucy in 1400, after the death of the last male descendant of Enguerrand III.
Coucy, Pierrefonds, and La Ferté-Milon have been so exhaustively described in special works, notably those of Viollet-le-Duc, that we need not reproduce them here. We have cited them as characteristic types of those colossal fortresses and keeps, admirable alike in grandiose proportion and refinement of detail which are the supreme expression of feudal power.
185. VITRÉ CASTLE
Several other castles were built in Albigeois, Auvergne, Limousin, Guyenne, La Vendée, and Provence, notably at Tarascon. The keeps of Trèves in Anjou also date from this period.
Important castles sprang up all over Brittany in the fifteenth century. Such were Combourg, Fougères, Montauban, St. Malo, Vitré, Elven, Sucinio, Dinan, Tonquédec, etc.
Many of these buildings which date from the close of the century were remarkable for their ingenuity of arrangement and richness of decoration. But though worthy of all attention from the artistic point of view, they do not come within the scope of our present study—that of military architecture in the Gothic period.