Castles and Chateaux of Old BurgundyMansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
History
Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy
Mansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
Burgundy (France) -- Description and travel; Castles -- France -- Burgundy
The feudal memories of Bresse are chiefly the ruins of the seigneurial
chateau at Chateauneuf, the chief-town of the Val-Romey. Built high on
the summit of a peak of rock and surrounded by deep-cut fosses, and
walls which drop down sheer like the sides of a precipice, this chief
feudal residence of the Val-Romey was more a fortress than a delectable
domestic establishment, though it served the functions of both, as was
frequently the case with the feudal edifice of its class. What it lacked
in actual luxury or comfort it made up for in the added protection
offered by its sturdy walls. This was notably true of all seigneurial
residences which occupied isolated positions in the feudal epoch. Its
walls to-day, shorn of any æsthetic beauty which they may once have
possessed, and crumbling and moss-grown on every side, still rise a
hundred or more feet in air above their rocky foundations, and in many
places have a thickness of a dozen or fifteen feet. They built well in
those old days, before the era of armoured cement covered with stucco.
Modern builders make great claims for their product, but will it last?
No man knows, and, from the fact that masonry cannot be built even
to-day so as to stand up against shot and shell, one doubts if modern
work is really as durable as that of a thousand years ago. The military
architecture of feudal France, so often closely allied with that of the
civic and domestic varieties, was preëminent in its time.
The religious architecture, the monasteries and churches, of these parts
have certainly more ornate reminders of the undeniable opulence of the
region than the secular examples still existing.
Connecting Bresse and the Franche Comté is a curious little battery of
townlets that have never been mentioned in the guide-books, nor ever
will be. A motor flight from Bourg-en-Bresse to Besançon evolved the
following: First came a smug little town named briefly Pierre. It
possesses a chateau, too, reckoned as one of the really remarkable
examples of the style of Burgundian building. It certainly looks all
that is claimed for it, though we saw it only in the dim twilight of a
May evening. The impression was all-satisfying, and, that being what one
really travels for, one should be content.
For a neighbour there was Champdivers, which recalled a memory of Odette
de Champdivers, the one time companion of the poor Charles VI. during
his latter unhappy days. Truly this was proving for us a most romantic
region, a region utterly neglected by the great world of tourists who
pick out the big-type names on the map and make up their itineraries
accordingly.
On the banks of the Doubs, near the border of Bresse and the Comté, lies
Molay, whose seigneur, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the
Templars, died at the stake in Paris during the playing of the great
drama of 1314.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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