The laws he promulgated and forced upon the barony were called "Le Coutume de Coucy." The battle of Bouvignes, in which he performed many acts of prowess and valor, and also his successes during the Albigensian war of 1209 added to his great fame as a warrior and caused the league of nobles to propose the dethronement of Louis IX, then a child, whose crown they offered to Enguerrand. So proud were his descendants that they abandoned their other titles and called themselves simple "de Coucy" and adopted the motto "Roi ne suys--ne prince, ne duc, ne compte aussi--je suys le Sire de Coucy." Descendants sold the Château, as it was called, and Jie Seigneurie de Coucy to Louis d'Orléans in 1400, who made it a duchy, and so amplified and decorated it that it became noteworthy throughout the realm. In 1411 it was besieged and captured by the royal army, and retained until 1419, when it was taken by the troops of the Duke of Orleans. In 1423 it was captured by the English, and again in 1652 by the royal army and dismantled by order of Mazarin. At the outbreak it was an "historical monument" kept up by the state as a museum. Coucy-le-Chateau was one of the greatest and most splendid relics of the thirteenth century. Nothing remains of it now. It has been utterly blasted away from the foundations. On the heights is only a series of great piles of crumpled masonry and pulverized rock. The oldest, the strongest, the largest and most historic of the castles of Europe is now only a memory. So enraged were the French at this piece of wanton destruction, that they refused to bombard the ruins, even though they knew that the invader had intrenched machine gunners behind and beneath it. Instead the infantry, unsupported by artillery, charged across a plain swept by gun fire and wrested the sacred ruin from the enemy. So terrific was the assault that the Germans could make no counter attack. Before they left the Germans boasted to the French villagers that more than thirty tons of explosives were used to destroy the castle. So great was the explosion, the peasants who witnessed it from a distance report that the great round tower, visible for miles around, seemed to rise in its vast bulk from the foundations, and slowly vanish in a cloud of whitish smoke. So fell Coucy. Another crime added to the already long list against the invader. The official explanation for its destruction coming from Berlin, is that "the Castle was not worth more than the life of one German soldier, and there are plenty of other such castles in southern Germany." The best view of the great chateau was that from the approach from the town of Lâon. My sketch shows the ruin in springtime, its battlements rising from the trees at its base, its magnificent pinkish gray mass against a sky of heavy white cumulous cloud just after a gentle rain. The small town nestled below it, and still had some vestiges of the old walls that formerly protected it.