Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/374

Gateway to the Citadel

scandal were the chivalrous gentlemen, already referred to, whom a chivalrous king caused to be skinned alive.

To balance this black tragedy, there was a pretty idyl in my castle only a few years later on: when it was the home for a while of Robert Bruce's son David, a boy of thirteen years, with his girl wife Jane—brought over secretly from Scotland, and hospitably housed in the Château Gaillard by the King's command. Froissart has a delightful chapter about it; and another chronicler, adding a touch of pathos, tells that the castle had a great charm for the little couple because it resembled the "Château de Berwick," and so "c'était comme un souvenir de la patrie absente." Just before the young people got there, probably to make things tidy for them, there seems to have been a general house-cleaning. "Pour nétoier les mesons du chestel, dix sous," is a charge in the castle accounts for the year 1333.

To tell of all the fights that went on under the walls of my castle would be to write the war history of France and England for four centuries—with some added chapters telling of French internal wars, as that of the League, in the course of which it changed hands. Through those four centuries the Seine valley was a battle-ground, and in the whole length of the valley the Château Gaillard—giving whoever held it a grip on the river highway—was the chief fighting prize. At one time it came to the English, after a seven months' siege, because—according to the French chroniclers—the well-ropes were worn out with use and the garrison surrendered not to the enemy but to thirst; or—according to the English chroniclers—because "after mature reflection" the garrison concluded that the intention of the besiegers to take the castle was "unshakable" and that they might as well give in. At another time it came to the French, commanded by the brave La Hire, as the result of an "escalade made by a Gascon esquire named Perot le Bueu"—who apparently took the fortress single-handed! And so, in one way or another, time and time again it was lost and won.

Some unknown peaceful genius—who must have been a person of consequence, since he had with him the Assembly of the States of Normandy—hit at last upon a radical plan for ending these useless battlings which ended only to be renewed. By the Assembly his plan was formulated, December 2, 1598, in a petition to the King praying that the Chateau Gaillard should be demolished; and the King—"fearing, perhaps, to see the castle fall into the hands of some powerful rebel lord"—granted the Assembly's prayer. Actually, there was a long delay before the prayer was realized. Not until the year 1603 did the demolition begin, even then in a very small way; and it went on so slowly that a full half-century passed, probably a still longer period, before Richard's gaillard masterpiece effectively was destroyed.

Picturesquely—as my artist's delightful drawings show—it still remains: a magnificent monument, superbly pathetic in its broken majesty, to that lion-hearted savage, its builder, in whom were blended the best and the worst of the instincts of his savage age.