THE CASTLE OF ANGERS, FRANCE.
Péan de la Tuilerie—the d’Argenville angevin—comes to tell us. “The Castle is at one of the extremities of the city, on a rock, and surrounded with deep moats, cut in the rock, which is an escarpment on the bank of a river that flows at its base, and from which they lift, by means of a very convenient machine, all the munitions which are necessary. It is of a triangular form, all built of slate and flanked by eighteen round towers and a crescent, which is the gate of the faubourg.”
Péan de la Tuilerie wrote in 1778. His description is still very nearly exact. To speak the truth, this military post forms less of a triangle than a pentagon, but the appearance of the Castle remains what it was in the last century. The girdle of moats has been, however, a little changed. The Maine rolls no longer beneath its towers. It is not, as you will readily believe, that the course of the river has been turned. To change the position of the fortress would have been difficult. They considered it simpler to fill up the canal. Some factories, some counting-houses, and some private dwellings occupy the place of the moat, and the traveller seeks vainly at the present moment for that “very convenient machine,” of which Péan speaks. Moreover, it would be useless. The Castle has no more need of munitions. English, Bretons and Normans have left it. Their attacks are ended. Angers ignores to-day those savage incursions and perpetual threats, which for several centuries, troubling its repose, kept its independence in check. Then the Castle had to sustain repeated sieges. The silence that envelops it has grown out of the clank of arms and the cries of the combatants, who many times made this stone colossus tremble to its very foundations. Ah! the noble rampart of the city! Its great days and its glorious past, haunt my memory.
Who chose its site? Count Eudes, under the royal approbation of Charles the Bald. The Plantagenets seem to have embellished and fortified the north turret of the building, but it is to Louis IX. that the primitive castle is indebted to its transformation into a military post. Its imposing towers, firmly planted on their bases of schist, are the work of Louis IX. Its large canals hollowed out of the slate date from the last years of the Fifteenth Century. They give character to the citadel. You judge it most impregnable in measuring the depth of its moats with your eye; but how many times had the enemy been repulsed by the rain of projectiles thrown from the Castle?
In 1444, the English approached the city. They ravaged the country mercilessly, and pillaged and ruined according to their good pleasure. The army encamped near the fortress, intending to open the siege on the following day. On the following day the English troops took their departure. What could have been the cause of their retreat? One of the English chiefs was hit in the forehead by a shot and instantly killed. This occasioned such confusion that the assailants fled. An artilleryman thus saved the city.
The Fifteenth Century was, moreover, the great epoch for the Castle of Angers. Louis XI., profound politician and crafty of action, meditated upon uniting the Duchy of Anjou to the crown of France. This was shown on two occasions. The second time, the Prince being at war with Bretagne had levied previously upon the city of Angers for subsidies for his troops. He came again. Behnard Guillaume Cerizay, his secretary, and three chamberlains entered Angers. They convoked and consulted with the notables. At this time plébiscites were unknown. People did not have the character to defend their rights and their interests. They were minors. But if the Angevin populace could have spoken, it would not have spoken better than its representatives. The notables chose for France. “The assembly,” wrote M. Port, “through the voice of the Chancellor of Anjou, pledged its faith to the King. On the following day, Louis XI. had come to the Castle offering a favourable reply to all requests, granting to the most zealous petitions leave to have a house in the city.” The Castle in which this act of submission to the King of France took place, was formerly the property of the Duc d’Anjou, who was at the same time Count of Provence and King of Sicily, René, son of Yolande, poet, amateur, bibliophile, collector, and patron of poets, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry-workers and illuminators who filled his court,
“René le prince populaire,
Doux artiste aux yeux éblouis
Des peintres que, pour lui plaire