Charles VIII. added the great round tower; but it was not completed until the reign of Louis XII. François I., in a not too friendly meeting, received Charles Quint here in 1539, just previous to his visit to Amboise. Marie de Medici, on escaping from Blois, stopped at the château at the invitation of the governor, the Duc d'Epernon, who sped her on her way, as joyfully as possible, to Angoulême.
The château itself is the chief attraction of interest, just as it is the chief feature of the landscape when viewed from afar. Of course it is understood that, when one speaks of the château at Loches, he refers to the collective châteaux which, in more or less fragmentary form, go to make up the edifice as it is to-day.
Whether we admire most the structure of Geoffrey Grise-Gonelle, the elegant edifice of the fifteenth century, or the additions of Charles VII., Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., or Henri III., we must conclude that to know this conglomerate structure intimately one must actually live with it. Nowhere in France—perhaps in no country—is there a château that suggests so stupendously the story of its past.
The chief and most remarkable features are undoubtedly the great rectangular keep or donjon, and the Tour Neuf or Tour Ronde. The first, in its immensity, quite rivals the best examples of the kind elsewhere, if it does not actually excel them in dimensions. It is, moreover, according to De Caumont, the most beautiful of all the donjons of France. As a state prison it confined Jean, Duc d'Alençon, Pierre de Brézé, and Philippe de Savoie.
The Tour Ronde is a great cylinder flanked with dependencies which give it a more or less irregular form. It encloses the prison where were formerly kept the famous cages, the invention of Cardinal Balue, who himself became their first victim. The Tour Ronde is reminiscent of two great female figures in the mediæval portrait gallery,—Agnes Sorel and Anne de Bretagne. The tomb of Agnes Sorel is here, and the Duchesse Anne made an oratory in this grim tower, from which she sent up her prayer for the success and unity of the political plans which inspired her marriage into the royal family of France. It is a daintily decorated chamber, with the queen's family device, the ermine with its twisted necklet, prominently displayed.
In the passage which conducts to the dungeons of this great round tower, one reads this ironical invitation: "Entrés, messieurs, ches le Roy Nostre Mestre" (O.F.).
That portion of the collective châteaux facing to the north is now occupied by the Sous-Préfecture, and is more after the manner of the residential châteaux of the Loire than of a fortress-stronghold or prison. Before this portion stands the famous chestnut-tree, planted, it is said, by François I., "and large enough to shelter the whole population of Loches beneath its foliage," says the same doubtful authority.
Under a fifteenth-century structure, called the Martelet, are the true dungeons of Loches. Here one is shown the cell occupied for nine years by the poor Ludovic Sforza, who died in 1510, from the mere joy of being liberated. More deeply hidden still is the famous Prison des Évêques of the era of François I. and the dungeon of Comte de St. Vallier, the father of the fascinating Diane, who herself was the means of securing his liberation by "fascinating the king," as one French writer puts it. This may be so. St. Vallier was liberated, we know, and the susceptible François was fascinated, though he soon tired of Diane and her charms. She had the perspicacity, however, to transfer her affections to his son, and so kept up a sort of family relationship.
Like the historic "prisoner of Gisors," the occupants of the dungeons at Loches whiled away their lonely hours by inscribing their sentiments upon the walls. Only one remains to-day, though fragmentary stone-carved letters and characters are to be seen here and there. He who wrote the following was certainly as cheerful as circumstances would allow:
"Malgré les ennuis d'une longue souffrance,
Et le cruel destin dont je subis la loy,
Il est encort des biens pour moy,
Le tendre amour et la douce espérance."