"The inner ballium is surrounded by a high circular wall, which consists of an uninterrupted line of bastions, some semi-circular and others square. The whole of this part of the castle remains nearly perfect. There are also traces of extensive foundations in various directions, and of great out-works. Château Gaillard was, in fact, a citadel, supported by numerous smaller fortresses, all of them communicating with the strong central hold, and disposed so as to secure every defensible post in the neighborhood. The wall of the outer ballium, which was built of a compact white and grey stone, is in most places standing, though in ruins. The original facing only remains in those parts which are too elevated to admit of its being removed with ease.--Beneath the castle, the cliff is excavated into a series of subterraneous caverns, not intended for mere passages or vaults, as at Arques and in most other places, but forming spacious crypts supported by pillars roughly hewn out of the living rock, and still retaining every mark of the workman's chisel. "The keep cannot be ascended without difficulty. We ventured to scale it; and we were fully repaid for our labor by the prospect which we gained. The Seine, full of green willowy islands, flows beneath the rock in large lazy windings: the peninsula below is flat, fertile, and well wooded: on the opposite shores, the fantastic chalky cliffs rise boldly, crowned with dark forests." NOTES: [185] Vol. II. p. 113. [186] So says Monstrelet; and he has generally been followed; but, according to Masseville, (_Histoire de Normandie_, IV. p. 84) the Norman Chronicle limits the duration of the siege to only seven months. PLATE LXXXII. CHURCH OF MONTIVILLIERS. [Illustration: Plate 82. ABBEY CHURCH OF MONTIVILLIERS. _West End._] Montivilliers is a town of about four thousand inhabitants, situated in a beautiful valley upon a small stream, called the _Lezarde_, near the western extremity of the Pays de Caux, within the distance of six leagues from Fécamp, and two from Havre de Grace. Its fortifications, now in ruins, were erected near the close of the fourteenth century, till which time it was altogether defenceless; but the state of France, just recovered from one English invasion and threatened with another, turned the thoughts of the government towards the securing of all vulnerable points on the northern frontier; and the trade of the place, though at present trifling, was at that period far otherwise. The cloths of Montivilliers were then considered to rival those of Flanders; and the preservation of the manufacture was regarded of so much consequence, that sundry regulations respecting it are to be found in the royal ordinances. The two circular towers of one of the gates now standing, afford a good specimen of the military architecture of the time.