Blosseville-Bonsecours.—Great panoramic view of Rouen.
Gisors is an exceedingly picturesque old town possessing a fine castle and a very beautiful church. Standing on the little River Epte, it was on the frontier of Normandy, and its importance in medieval times was due to this fact. It was William Rufus who realized the strategic value of the place, and, having obtained possession of it, Robert de Bellesme in 1097 built him a castle, the keep of which, raised upon an artificial mound, is standing to-day. The first two Henrys of England strengthened the castle with towers, and in 1196, when Gisors was ceded to Philippe Auguste at the Treaty of Louviers, still further building was carried out, including a subsidiary keep on the outer line of defence, now called the Tour du Prisonnier. A considerable portion of the eleventh-century walls of Rufus’s castle are still standing.
It is worth while to climb the fifteenth-century staircase turret in the Norman keep, and from it see the outer walls of the castle down below, with the town built close up to it on three sides, and out across the green fields, about four kilometres to the west, appears the ruined tower of the castle of Neaufles. A subterranean passage, so it is said, connected the castle of Gisors with Neaufles. During a siege in the thirteenth century a sortie was made by Queen Blanche of Castile, the mother of St. Louis (IX.), with only a small party, and being cut off from Gisors, they made for the fortress of Neaufles, which was a ruin even at that time. Night was approaching, so the best plan was to surround the ruin and make the Queen a prisoner in the morning. But when daylight came there was no sign of life within the old walls, for the Queen and her men had taken advantage of the secret passage, and had not only reached Gisors in safety, but had prepared a stronger force, which sallied forth and scattered their amazed enemies.
The salient fact concerning Gisors, which it is not easy to keep in mind, is that this quaint old town was a feudal stronghold of the English, and that the Epte formed the frontier of English land. It was therefore the scene of many alarms and excursions and much hard fighting. When it became a French possession through the treaty already mentioned, Richard Cœur-de-Lion built Château Gaillard, a few miles away, on the Seine, although he had undertaken not to fortify that spot, for without some such defence Rouen lay at the mercy of the French.
The little chapel in the keep at Gisors was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury; only the foundations remain to-day, but these, if carefully cleared of grass, weeds, and rubble, would be an interesting addition to the ruin.
In the dungeon of the Tour du Prisonnier there are many curious carvings and scratchings on the stone walls. The chief of these are attributed to Nicholas Poulain, who, in the fifteenth century, was kept in this hopeless prison for four years by Louis XI.
The streets of Gisors are full of charm, for, although stucco has been applied far too liberally to quaint overhanging houses of the sixteenth century, or earlier, their individuality has, in many instances, survived the treatment, and carved brackets and moulded beams are frequently to be seen. The greenish, and yet transparent, waters of the Epte flow through the town in the form of a canal, and the covered washing-places for the women are of exceptional picturesqueness.
The Hôtel de Ville, dating from the seventeenth century, was formerly a convent of the Carmelites.
The Church, dedicated to the saints Gervais and Protais, is a building of wonderful charm, and peeps of its Flamboyant carving, seen through narrow passages between antique timber-framed houses, are some of the delights of the town. The earliest portion of the building is the choir, with its aisles, built in the thirteenth century through the generosity of Queen Blanche, who was Regent for her son during his minority, and while he was away crusading in the Holy Land (see under Pontoise). The nave, chapels, and towers date from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, the wonderfully enriched north portal is Flamboyant, and the west end, with its two unfinished towers, belongs to the Renaissance period, as at Evreux (Section III.). The towers were stopped at their present height, for fear that they might be used against the castle if the town were occupied by an enemy.