The expedition sailed first to Rhodes and thence to Chios, and here Cœur fell ill as the result of a wound received in some skirmish on the way. He died on the 25th of November and was buried in the Franciscan church on the island, forgiving his enemies and his king with his last breath.
As has been said, Jacques Cœur's most princely residence, that at Bourges, was begun in 1443, when he was at the height of his prosperity, and was nearly completed when in 1451 his downfall came. In spite of changes in the arrangement of the interior, in spite of a clumsy addition in the Renaissance style on the right of the courtyard, and in spite of some blunders in the restoration, which was undertaken by the government in 1858, the building has escaped any grave mutilation, and may be taken as a type of the princely residence of its century.
| GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK |
| FIFTEENTH-SIXTEENTH CENTURY |
| Germanic Museum: Nuremberg |
Owing to the loss of Cœur's personal papers in the confusion incident to his trial, the name of his architect is unknown. From the general style and especially on account of certain details of ornamentation it is possible that he was Jean Gaussel, the architect who built the façade of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois at Paris; but this is merely a surmise.
As a site for this house Cœur had bought a domain, known as the Fief de la Chaussée, which bordered upon the ancient rampart of Bourges, and included two of the original towers of that rampart. These two towers he restored and heightened, and they served as a beginning for the new construction and were incorporated with it. The general plan of the whole is an irregular pentagon—a central court surrounded by unsymmetrical groups of buildings, according to the disposition of almost all mediæval civil and military buildings. It is clear that the architect sacrificed every consideration of symmetry to the exigencies of usefulness and convenience; but the resulting irregularity is quite in harmony with the Gothic style, and conduces not a little to the picturesqueness of the whole.
| PLATE LV | HOUSE OF JACQUES CŒUR: COURTYARD |