Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy

CHAPTER XXII

IN LOWER DAUPHINY

THERE is not a village or a town in Dauphiny, be it ever so humble, but which guards some vestige or tradition of some feudal chateau or fortress of the neighbourhood. Nor are ocular evidences wanting which even he who runs may read. This is far from stating that the region is strewn with noble and luxurious monuments as are Touraine or Anjou, but nevertheless he, or she, who knows how to translate the story of the stones may make up history to any extent he likes, and yet never finish the volume. And much of the tale will be as vivid and thrilling as that of the western and southern provinces, which are usually given the palm for romance.

On almost any site around one’s horizon a seigneur might have built himself a chateau, an all but impregnable stronghold where he might sustain successfully the powers vested in him as a vassal of the Dauphin. This was the usual procedure, and if many of these classic strongholds have disappeared, there are enough remaining to suggest the frequency and solidity of mediæval building in these parts, a species of castle building which here in the mountains differed not a little from that of the lowlands. It is just this view-point that makes the study of the chateaux of Dauphiny the more interesting. Even the imperfectly preserved ruins which crown many a peak and hill-top are suggestive of this unique and effective manner of castle building, and though many have fallen from sheer decay in later years, it is chiefly because they were undermined or overthrown in some great or petty quarrel, and not because their design was not well thought out nor their workmanship thorough. The picks of Louis XI caused more actual depredation than has the stress of time. Often but a local legend remains to tell the tale. Chambaraud, Mantailles, and Beaufort have disappeared, and Moras, Thodure and Vireville, all of them reminiscent of the prowess of the feudal barons, are in truth but dim reminiscences of their once proud estate.

Between Grenoble and Vienne is the Chateau de Bressieux, most picturesque, the first great requirement of a castle. It dates, in part, from the twelfth century. That is its second qualification. Antiquity comes after picturesqueness in its appeal to even the traveller of conventional mould.

The Barons of Bressieux were by the right of their title members of the Parliament of Dauphiny. The situation of their chateau assured them the full and free exercise of their power, right or wrong, and, like all the Dauphinese seigneurs, they were practically rulers of a lilliputian empire.

It seems that the celebrated Mandrin, a brigand so dignified that he was ranked as a “gentilhomme,” married into the family of Bressieux. History has apparently been unjust to Mandrin, “the escroc who possessed the manners of a dandy,” but at any rate there be those in Dauphiny to-day who revere his memory before that of Bayard.

Saint Marcellin, in the lower valley of the Isère, is Italian in its general aspect and layout. Its house walls, its roof-tops and its arcaded streets are what most folk will at once call Italian. Be this as it may, it was originally the stronghold of the native Dauphins and the place in their royaume where they lived the most at ease and ate and drank the best. This is not conjecture or a far-away twentieth century estimate, but a quotation from recorded history. The only thing one recalls of Saint Marcellin in the eating line to-day is an exceedingly pungent variety of goat’s milk cheese. It is not for that that most of us make of the quaint little Dauphinese city a place of pilgrimage.

Saint Marcellin was the seat of the ancient Dauphinese Parliament, but since it was three times destroyed by fire, it actually possesses but few of its old-time monumental records in stone.

Beauvoir, scarce a kilometre away from Saint Marcellin, was the site of an incomparable chateau-fort which, it is sad to state, the enthusiasm of Louis XI for pulling things down did not leave unspoiled. To-day the chateau is a reminiscence only, but the situation, at the juncture of the Iseret, the Isère and the Cuman, tells the possibilities of its storied past in the eye’s rapid review. There is little doubt that mere attack could have had but small effect on its sturdy walls, and that its having been destroyed or injured in any way must have been the result of weakness or lack of courage on the part of those who held it from within. Only two definite architectural details of this great fortress remain as they were in those warlike times, the tower of the chapel and a flank of wall containing a series of ogival windows.

Still in the Vallée Saint Marcellinoise, as this junction of the three rivers is known, one sees the ignoble pile which marks the site of the former chateau of the Seigneur de Flandaines, one of the allies of the Dauphins, descended from one of the proudest families of the region.

The Seigneur de Flandaines would build himself a stronghold so sturdy that no one might take it from him, nor no one drive him out; primarily this was the formula upon which all castles were built. This was the very sentiment that the seigneur expressed to Louis XI at the time when the latter was but a Prince of Dauphiny:

“Lou vassa de fe valan mais que lousignous in buro.”

It was only another way of saying (in the local patois) that a vassal clothed in armour was worth considerably more than one who dressed only in velvet.

The Dauphin took this to mean much, but he had a mighty envy for the Seigneur de Flandaines, and sought forthwith the ways and means by which to turn him out of his fortress abode.

The Dauphin invited the seigneur to a court ball and plied him and his retainers with food and drink, not only to excess, but to the point of insensibility. After this the troops of the Dauphin marched on Flandaines, took it without the least resistance, turned it over to the crowbars of the house-breakers, and went back and told their prince that their work was finished.

In the Chateau de Rochechinard, near Flandaines, the Dame de Beaujeau, emulator of the policy of Louis XI, martyred the poor Zizim, son of Mohamet II and brother of Bajazet. The history of the affair entire is not to be recounted here, but the Turk was exiled in France and chose this “pays de Franguistan,” of which he had read, as the preferred place of his future abode.

Louis XI arranged with one of his Dauphinese familiars to take the infidel into his chateau. The alien was at first enchanted with his new life and played the zither and sang songs to the fair ladies of Dauphiny all the long day with all the gallantry of a noble of France. He went further: he would have married with one of the most gracious he had met: “It was a thing a thousand times more to be sought for than the control of the Ottoman Empire,” he said.

For the moment it was the one thing that the Turk desired in life. Proof goes further and states that for the purpose he became converted to Christianity.

And the rest? The fair lady of Dauphiny did not marry the Turk; so he was sent a hundred leagues away in further exile and the daughter of the Béranger-Sasseange married and forgot – in fact she married three times before she eradicated the complete memory of the affair.

To-day the walls of Rochechinard are half buried in an undergrowth of vine and shrubs and are nothing more than a sad reminder of the history which has gone before.

Three leagues from Saint Marcellin and Beauvoir is Saint Antoine, a sixteenth century townlet of fifteen hundred souls which has endured much, as it has always existed unto this day. It possesses one of the most remarkable and astonishing flamboyant-Gothic churches in all Christendom.

During the middle ages Saint Antoine was a place of pilgrimage for Popes and princes, and the Dauphins, by reason of their intimate associations with the distinguished visitors to their country, gained both riches and power from the circumstance.

When Dauphiny came to be united to the Crown of France the tradition of Saint Antoine and its life-giving wine continued, and neither François Premier nor Louis XI neglected to make the journey thither. In the case of François Premier there may have been another good, or at least sufficient, reason, for Saint Vallier and Diane de Poitiers were but a few hours away. But that’s another point of view, a by-path which need not be followed here, since it would lead us too far astray.

Following still the valley of the Isère, one comes to the Chateau de la Sone, at one time one of the strongest fortifications of the lower valley. It was the key to the Royonnais, and a subterranean passage led from its platform underneath the bed of the Isère itself to a chateau of the Dauphins on the opposite bank.

With the establishment of a silk-mill here in the chateau in 1771 all romance fled, and there being no more need for a subterranean exit, the passage-way was allowed to fill up. To-day one takes the assertion on faith; there is nothing to prove it one way or another.

It was here within these walls that Vaucanson (1709-1782), the “sorcier-mécanicien,” invented the chain without end, which revolutionized the silk-spinning industry.

The aspect of the chateau to-day, declassed though it is, is most picturesque. It is the very ideal of a riverside castle, for it bears the proud profile of a fortress of no mean pretensions even now, far more than it does that of a luxurious dwelling or a banal factory. It is one of those structures one loves to know intimately, and not ignore just because it has become a commoner among the noble chateaux of history.

Two very curious twin towns are Romans and Bourg-de-Péage, separated by the rapidly flowing waters of the Isère. If such a groupment of old houses and rooftops were in Switzerland or Germany, and were presided over by some burgrave or seneschal, all the world of tourists would rave over their atmosphere of mediævalism. Being in France, and off the main lines of travel, they are largely ignored, even by the French themselves. It is to be remarked that their history and romance have been such that the souvenirs and monuments which still exist in these curious old towns are most appealing. In that they are now seeking to attract visitors, a better fate is perhaps in store for Romans and Bourg-de-Péage than has been their portion during the last decade of popular touring.

Chateaux of a minor sort there are galore at Romans. Noble and opulent hôtels privées in almost every street reflect the glories of the days of the Dauphins, still but little dimmed. Here and there an elaborately sculptured façade without, or a courtyard within, bespeaks a lineal dignity that of later years has somewhat paled before the exigencies of modern life.

Romans of late years has become a ville commercante and has broken the bounds of its old ramparts and flowed over into new quarters and suburbs which have little enough the character of the old town. This is a feature to be remarked of most French towns which are not actually somnolent, though true enough it is that in population they may have gained very little on the centuries gone by. The demand is for new living conditions, as well as those of trade, and so perforce a certain part of the population has to go outside to live in comfort.

It was from the castle of Mazard at Romans, now a poor undignified ruin, that the last of the native Dauphins signed his abdication in favour of Philippe de Valois, who acquired the province for the French Crown. The event was induced by the loss of his infant son, who, by some mysterious agent, fell into the swift-flowing Isère at the base of the castle walls. Overwhelmed with grief, the father would no longer hold the reins of state, and turned his patrimony over to the French king with content and satisfaction, stipulating only that the French heir to the throne should be known as the Dauphin henceforth, a state of affairs which obtained until the reign of Louis Philippe.

South from Romans lies Die, which in spite of its great antiquity has conserved little of its ancient feudal memories. There are some ancient walls with a supporting tower here and there, but this is all that remains to suggest the power that once radiated from the Dea Vocontiorum of the ancients.

From Die down towards the Rhône, through the valley of the Drome, is however a pathway still strewn with many reminders of the feudality. Where the valley of Quint enters that of the Drome, are Pontaix and Sainte Croix, each of them possessed of a fine old ruin of a chateau on a hill overlooking the town and the river-bed below.

Outside the stage setting of an opera no one ever saw quite so romantically disposed a landscape as here. The hills and vales bordering upon the Rhine actually grow pale before this little stretch of a dozen kilometres along the banks of the Drome.

The village of Sainte Croix, and its chateau, is the more notable of the two mentioned, and played an important rôle in the military history of the Diois. First of all the Romans laid the foundations of the fortress one sees on the height above the crooked streets of the town. This was originally a work intended to protect their communications from their capital city at Vienne, on the banks of the Rhône, with Milan, beyond the Alpine frontier.

Formerly, it was a stronghold of the Emperor of the Occident, and in 1215 the Emperor Frederick II gave it to the Bishop of Saint Paul-Trois-Chateaux, who, by the end of the century, had transferred it to the house of Poitiers. Catholics and Protestants occupied it turn by turn during the religious wars, when, after the taking of La Rochelle, Richelieu razed it, as he did so many another feudal monument up and down the length and breadth of France.

A great modern – comparatively modern – pile situated at the entrance of the village, has nothing in common with the old fortress on the height, and, though to-day it well presents the suggestion of a fortified mediæval manor, it is in reality nothing but a walled farm, a transformation from an old Antonian convent suppressed at the Revolution.