Mayenne
At the bottom flows the Mayenne, joining the Loire at Angers, and on its banks is nestled snugly the town of Mayenne itself, with a truly delightful riverside hotel and church.
Just below it is the ancient castle built on a rocky escarpment overhanging the river. There are five great towers on the riverside, and three others on the north, of which one alone has preserved its conical roof. To-day it serves as a prison, but there are yet to be seen in its interior some fragments of the ornamentation of the thirteenth century. The terrace of the château forms a delightful promenade overlooking the river.
William the Conqueror besieged Geoffrey III. here in 1064, but the most celebrated siege which the château underwent was that by the Count of Salisbury in 1424.
The Hôtel de Ville is an admirable relic of other days, though by no means pretentious. It is a small, rectangular structure, its front ornamented with two enormous solar devices, and the whole surmounted by a graceful bell-tower. Behind the Hôtel de Ville stands a bronze statue of Cardinal Cheverus, first Bishop of Boston. The Church of Notre Dame is really a grand structure, with its fine showing of splayed buttresses. Its foundation dates from 1110, and it admirably exhibits the best traditions of its time.
Five kilometres away are the remains of the old Cistercian Abbey of Fontaine-Daniel, founded in 1204 by Juhel III. There are some remarkable fragments of its old foundation still remaining, but a large part of the present edifice is of the seventeenth century. From Mayenne to Fougères, still on the highroad to the west, one passes Ernée, whose name is not known to many travellers and which is not marked on every map, though it is a bustling town of five thousand inhabitants.
The origin of this place is due to the foundation of a château—on the site of the present quaint church—by the Lords of Mayenne, who were, in the sixteenth century, of the house of Lorraine.
Henri of Lorraine was killed by a musket-shot at the siege of Montaubon, and was brought here to die in 1654.
Some years later the Seigneury of Mayenne and Ernée passed to the hands of Cardinal Mazarin, who transmitted it to his niece, and gave the old château for transformation into the present church.