Part 21
I looked around me: the vast deserted plain was transformed as if by enchantment into an immense garden full of delightful groves, crossed in every direction by great avenues, dotted with little country houses and rustic cabins covered with vines; and, here and there were tossing fountains, shady nooks, flowery meadows, vineyards, little footpaths, and a greenness, a freshness, an odour of spring, a breath of joy and delight that wafted your soul to paradise. We had arrived at Aranjuez. I left the train, threaded my way down a beautiful avenue shaded by two rows of gigantic trees, and in an instant found myself opposite the royal palace.
Castelar, the minister, wrote recently in his _memorandum_ that the fall of the ancient Spanish monarchy was foreseen on the day that a herd of populace with abuse on their lips and anger in their hearts, invaded the palace of Aranjuez to disturb the tranquil majesty of its sovereigns. I was precisely on that spot, where, on March 17, 1808, occurred the events that formed the prologue to the national war and the first word of the sentence, as it were, that condemned the ancient monarchy to death. I immediately looked for the windows of the apartment of the Prince of Peace; I pictured him, fleeing from hall to hall, pale and dishevelled, hunting for a hiding-place, amidst the echoing cries of the multitude that mounted the stairway; I saw poor Charles IV. place the crown on the head of the Prince of the Asturias with trembling hands; all the scenes of that terrible drama passed before my eyes; and the deep silence of this place and the sight of that shut and abandoned palace chilled me to the heart.
The palace is built like a castle; it is of brick with corners of white marble, and covered with a slate roof. Every one knows that Philip II. had it built by the celebrated architect Herrera, and that nearly all his successors embellished it, and lived there during the summer season. I entered: the interior is splendid; there is a resplendent hall for the reception of ambassadors, a beautiful Chinese cabinet of Charles III., a superb dressing-room of Isabella II., and a profusion of precious ornaments. But all the riches of the palace are not worth the view of the gardens. Expectations are not deceived. The gardens of Aranjuez (Aranjuez is the name of the little town situate a short distance from the palace) seem to have been laid out for the family of Titan Kings, to whom the parks and gardens of our Kings would have appeared like terrace parterres and sheep-folds. Avenues, extending as far as the eye can reach and bordered by trees of an inordinate height uniting their branches and leaning towards us as if bent by two contrary winds, in every direction cross a forest the boundaries of which one cannot see; and through this forest the wide and rapid Tagus describes a majestic curve, forming here and there cascades and basins; a luxuriant and flourishing vegetation abounds amid a labyrinth of little avenues and cross-roads; everywhere is seen the whiteness of statues, fountains, columns and high jets of water that fall in sheets and rain and spray on all the flowers known to Europe and America; and to the majestic sound of the cascade of the Tagus is joined the song of innumerable nightingales that pour their trills into the mysterious shade of the lonely paths. Beyond the gardens, rises a little marble palace, modest in appearance, which contains all the marvels of the most magnificent royal residence, and where one still breathes the atmosphere of the life of the Kings of Spain. Here are the little secret chambers the ceilings of which may be touched by the hand, the billiard-room of Charles IV., cushions embroidered by the hands of queens, musical clocks that amused the idle children, little stairways, tiny windows that preserve a hundred little traditions of the caprice of princes: and, finally, the richest toilet-room in Europe, due to a whim of Charles IV., and which contains in itself so much wealth that one could draw enough from it to build a palace, without depriving it of the noble pre-eminence it boasts above all rooms appropriated to the same use.
Beyond this palace, and around the woodlands, extend vineyards, olive-trees, plantations of fruit-trees and smiling meadows. It is a veritable oasis surrounded by a desert which Philip II. chose in a day of good humour, as if to alleviate the black melancholy of the Escurial with a gay picture. On returning from the little marble palace to the great palace of the Escurial down these long avenues, beneath the shade of these large trees, in this profound peace of the forest, I thought of the splendid pageants of ladies and cavaliers that formerly followed the steps of the gay young monarchs and capricious and unrestrained queens to the sound of love-songs and hymns, celebrating the grandeur and the glory of unvanquished Spain, and I repeated sadly with the poet of Recanati:
“... All is peace and silence, And one speaks no longer of them....”
GLAMIS CASTLE
LADY GLAMIS
To the lover of Shakespeare, the name of Glammis (as it was sometimes spelt) will recall the act of treachery and murder which tradition gives as having taken place there, when King Duncan was done to death by the hand or at the instigation of the ambitious and unscrupulous Lady Macbeth; although there is no possibility of proving or testing the truth as to the details or locality of the tragedy.
To the antiquarian, the Castle must be of immense interest on account of the great age of the central portion, or keep, which is known to have been standing in 1016, but “whose birth tradition notes not”; while to the romantic and superstitious it is associated as a place where ghosts and spirits moving silently down winding stairs and dark passages are wont to make night fearsome. This feeling of eeriness is not confined to the naturally nervous, for Sir Walter Scott, who spent a night at Glamis in 1794, writes:
“After a very hospitable reception, ... I was conducted to my apartment in a distant part of the building. I must own that when I heard door after door shut, after my conductor had retired, I began to consider myself too far from the living and somewhat too near the dead.”
Additional interest attaches to this castle from the fact that its venerable walls enshroud a _mysterious something_, which has for centuries baffled the curiosity and investigations of all unauthorized persons; this secret is known only to three people--the Earl of the time being, his eldest son, and one other individual, whom they think worthy of their confidence.
Most people have theories upon this subject, and many ridiculous stories are told; but so carefully has the mystery been guarded, that no suspicion of the truth has ever come to light. One version of the story is as follows: Several centuries ago the Lord Glamis of the time was entertaining the head of another noble family then resident in Angus; and in the course of the evening they commenced to play cards. It was Saturday night, and so intent were they on wagering lands and money on the issue of the game, that they did not recognize the fact that Sunday morning was approaching until an old retainer ventured to remind them of the hour. Whereupon one of the gamblers swore a great oath, with the tacit approval of the other, that they did not care what day it might be, but they would finish their game at any cost, even if they went on playing till Doomsday! It had struck midnight ere he had finished his sentence, when there suddenly appeared a stranger dressed in black, who politely informed their lordships that he would take them at their word, and vanished.
The story goes on to aver that annually on that night three noblemen, or their spirits, meet and play cards in the _secret room_ of the Castle, and that this will go on till Doomsday. In corroboration of this story, it is said that on a certain night in the autumn of every year, loud noises are heard, and some of the casements of the Castle are blown open.
Glamis Castle stands in the centre of the vale of Strathmore, in a picturesque and well-wooded part of Forfarshire; the heather-clad sides of the Sidlaws, which divide Strathmore from the sea, rising to the south, while away to the north tower the Grampians, which form a magnificent background to the ancient pile of buildings, whose turrets rise some hundred and fifteen feet above the level of the ground.
The poet, Gray, in a letter, describes the exterior of the castle in the following words:
“The house, from the height of it, the greatness of its mass, the many towers atop, and the spread of its wings, has really a very singular and striking appearance, like nothing I ever saw.”
The oldest portions of the Castle are formed of huge irregular blocks of old red sandstone, which time and weather have mellowed into a beautiful grey, pink colour. The walls in many places are sixteen feet thick, which in the olden days had the essential recommendation of great security, and also of allowing space for secret rooms and passages as means of escape in times of peril; and as a matter of fact, two secret staircases have been discovered within the last five-and-twenty years, and possibly there are others which still remain forgotten and unused.
The narrow windows appear at irregular heights and distances in the central building or keep and left wing (the right wing having been burnt down and rebuilt early in 1800, is not so interesting), but the great staircase added by Patrick, Lord Glamis, in 1605, is very fine, occupying a circular tower, the space for which has been partly dug out of the old walls of the keep, and rises to the third story. This staircase (the designing for which has been attributed to Inigo Jones) is spiral, with a hollow newel in the centre, and is composed of stone to the summit. It consists of 143 steps, 6 feet 10 inches in width, each of _one_ stone.
The staircases, which were in use before 1600, are very narrow, dark, and some of them winding, the steps steep and irregular in height, worn into hollows by the many feet that for centuries climbed them. Up two flights of these dimly lit, uneven stairs, the wounded king, Malcolm II., after having been treacherously attacked and mortally wounded by Kenneth V. and his adherents on the Hunter’s Hill, about a mile from the Castle, was carried by his followers to die in the chamber that still bears the name of King Malcolm’s room. This murder of King Malcolm is the first authentic event mentioned by the chroniclers in connection with Glamis.
In the time of King Malcolm, Glamis was a royal residence, and remained so till 1372, when Sir John Lyon, “a young man of very good parts and qualities, and of a very graceful and comely person, and a great favourite with the king” (Robert II.), was made Lord High Chamberlain of Scotland. At that time the king’s daughter, the Princess Jean, fell in love with this young knight, and was given him in marriage together with the lands of the thanedom of Glamis, “_pro laudabili et fideli servitio et continuis laboribus_,” as the charter bears witness, March 18, 1372. Ten years later Sir John fell in a duel with Sir James Lindsay of Crawford, and was buried at Scone among the kings of Scotland. He left one son, from whom the present family of Lyon have descended without a break from _father to son_ to the present day. Fifty years later, Sir Patrick Lyon (Sir John’s grandson), who was one of the hostages to the English for the ransom of James I. from 1424 to 1427, was created Baron Glamis, and appointed Master of the Household to the King of Scotland. For the next hundred years nothing of interest occurred till John, sixth Lord Glamis, married the beautiful Janet Douglas, granddaughter of the great Earl of Angus (Bell-the-Cat), and died in 1528. Lady Glamis married, secondly, Archibald Campbell, of Kepneith, whose relative, another Campbell, fell in love with her. Finding, however, that his addresses were but ill received by this lady, who was as good as she was lovely, his love turned to hate, and he revenged himself by informing the authorities that Lady Glamis, her son, Lord Glamis, and John Lyon, his relative, were conspiring against the life of the king, James V., by poison or witchcraft. They were tried for high treason, and wrongfully convicted! Lady Glamis and her young son were both sentenced to be _burned_, and the estate of Glamis was forfeited and annexed to the Crown by Act of Parliament, December 3d, 1540. However, these brutal judges, on account of the extreme youth of Lord Glamis, feared to bring him to execution, so the boy was kept in prison, with the death sentence hanging over him, while the beautiful Lady Glamis was dragged forth and burned at the stake on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, July 17th, 1537. Those were days when acts of violence and cruelty were regarded with an indifference that we cannot now realize, although when she stood up in her beauty to undergo this fearful sentence, it is recorded that all heads were bowed in sorrowful sympathy. When this infamous execution was accomplished, remorse seems to have come over Campbell, who was visited by visions of his victim looking at him with sad, reproachful eyes. When, some years later, his death was drawing nigh, he confessed that his evidence at the trial was altogether false. Lord Glamis was therefore released from prison, and his estates and honours restored.
To return to the Castle. The exterior is much ornamented with ancient armorial bearings in carved stone, while a round niche over the front door contains a bust of Earl Patrick. The principal entrance is a striking feature. The doorway is small and low, and a stout iron-clenched oaken door, thickly studded with nails, is guarded on the inside by a heavily grated iron gate, which opens right on to the staircase. A flight of steps to the right of the entrance leads down to the dungeons, vaults, and the old well (now filled up) which supplied the inmates with water in times of siege; while another stair to the left leads up to the Retainers’ Hall (or Crypt as it is now called), low, and fifty feet in length, with walls and arched roof entirely composed of stone. Of the seven windows, which are small, four or five are cut out of the thickness of the walls, and make recesses just large enough to form small rooms, which might have been used as sleeping chambers in old days. Lay figures, clad in complete armour, stand in the recesses, which, especially in the dusk, give an eerie effect to this part of the Castle. It is said that a ghostly man in armour walks this floor at night--possibly the original of one of those armoured figures standing silently in the crypt year after year, who may, perchance, have ended his life in the dungeon that lies exactly underneath.
CHÂTEAU DE CHINON
J. J. BOURRASSÉE
To the traveller who arrives at Chinon from the south or west, the aspect of the old castle is imposing. What an effect it must have produced at the period of its full splendour! Originally it was a fortress situated on an eminence commanding the course of the Vienne and the fertile plain of Veron. It might be regarded as the key of lower Touraine. Therefore we see the Romans, the Visigoths, the Franks, and, later, the Counts of Anjou and Touraine, the Kings of England and France sparing no efforts to secure its possession. In 462, Frederic, brother of Theodoric King of the Visigoths, having advanced as far as the banks of the Loire, seized the Castle of Chinon: up to that time the Romans had occupied it, and by its favourable position it had become the last citadel of their power in this part of Gaul. Ægidius Afranius, the Roman governor of Gaul, hastened into Touraine to recover Chinon; but he could not do it by force of arms. Despairing of carrying the place of assault, the Romans blockaded it. The defenders were at the last extremity from lack of water when a violent storm poured abundant rain within the ramparts. The Romans raised the siege and the Visigoths remained masters of the castle until the defeat of Alaric in the plains of Vouille. The conquering Clovis understood the importance of this military post and made it one of the ramparts of his kingdom.
The Frankish princes installed themselves there so well that no foe ever thought of disputing its possession with them. The Carlovingians were still its masters when feudalism transformed to the profit of the great barons the precarious title that they held by the confidence of the sovereign. Thibault the Trickster had Touraine as his share in this vast parcelling out of France. He had the Castle of Chinon repaired and often resided there, as in an impregnable fortress. Thibault’s lot in the partition of the territory was not in the least an agreeable one, for he had to defend it against the envy of his neighbors. Touraine for about a century was a prey over which rival powers fought. In the end it remained with the strongest. The Count of Anjou became completely master of it after the battle of Nouy, fought on the heights of Montlouis in 1044. Even in the bosom of this powerful house there were quarrels over the possession of the Castle of Chinon. An unequal partition between Geoffroy le Barbu and Foulques le Rechin led to war between those two brothers. Abandoned and betrayed by his followers, Geoffroy was made prisoner and cast into the cells of the Castle of Chinon, where he remained closely immured for the space of eighteen years with such rigour that he almost lost his reason. Nothing less than the intervention of Pope Urban II. in 1096 was required to have him set at liberty.
Thanks to a marriage, the house of Anjou mounted the throne of England and Chinon became a royal possession. Henry Plantagenet, great-grandson of Foulques le Rechin, brings this fine residence into new relief. Henry II. made it his favourite manor. He made it the seat of a royally privileged domain, comprising Cande, Champigny, La Haye, L’Île Bouchard, Saint Epain, Sainte Maure, Azay le Rideau and Bourgueil. Henry II. added to the Castle of Chinon a fortress distinct from the other buildings, with its own ramparts, moats, gates, drawbridges, buildings for the accommodation of the King, his court and his archers, and its church dedicated to St. George. From his donjon keep, the King of England ceaselessly laboured to increase his territory and his influence on the Continent. By means of his marriage with Eleanor of Guienne, repudiated by King Louis VII., he had become more powerful than his sovereign. It seems as if nothing could stay the course of such success, were it not for discord in his own family. At war with Philip Augustus, and with his own son the famous Richard Cœur de Lion, the King of England retired to Chinon. Necessity compelled him to sign with the King of France the humiliating peace of Azay sur Cher. “Shame!” he cried, “shame to the vanquished king! Cursed be the day I was born! Curses upon my two sons!” This fit of fury sent him to the tomb, July 6, 1189. He was carried without pomp to the Abbey of Fontévrault, near Chinon, where he had desired to be buried.
Ten years later, another train took the same road: it was that of Richard Cœur de Lion. Being mortally wounded at the siege of Chaluz, that prince caused himself to be taken to Chinon, where he quickly succumbed in cruel agony. He was buried beside Henry II. in the Abbey of Fontévrault, that celebrated house that has had as abbess fourteen princesses of the royal blood, and that had deserved the name of _King’s Cemetery_. In an obscure corner are still to be seen the admirable statues of the counts of Anjou, masterpieces of the statuary at the close of the Twelfth Century.
At that time, nothing presaged that the Castle of Chinon was to leave the hands of the Kings of England, when suddenly a protracted cry of horror and indignation resounded through the world. John Lackland had just got rid of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, by a cowardly murder at Rouen. Philip Augustus summoned the murderer to appear before the court of the peers of the realm. After several adjournments regularly notified, the criminal, not having presented himself, was condemned to lose the fiefs held from the French crown. The sentence was easy to deliver, but not so easy to execute. The King of France hastened to Touraine at the head of an army and took possession of Tours, Loches and Chinon.
It must be admitted that the Castle of Chinon was valiantly defended; it was carried by assault after an obstinate struggle in 1205. Philip Augustus gave it a good garrison. After that day, the English never set foot in it; and when during our intestine discord they profited by treason and dominated many of our provinces, the Castle of Chinon was the last refuge of the monarchy. From there were struck all the blows that gave France back her independence.
Feudalism had greatly lessened the royal power. Noble efforts had been made to restore the authority that the king ought never to have lost. These attempts had produced memorable results; but the great feudatories were discontented. They wanted to profit by the minority of Louis IX. and the regency of a woman to recover the power that had escaped them. Events called St. Louis and Queen Blanche to Chinon. The young king held a parliament of twenty days at the castle gates. The rebel lords refused to attend, but their plans were rendered abortive, thanks to the activity of Blanche of Castile.
Philip Augustus had partly rebuilt the Castle of Chinon: the Thirteenth Century work is easily visible amid the later constructions. Under the reign of St. Louis, further works to render this fortress as a whole more formidable were executed.
In 1308, a great bustle was manifest in the Castle and town of Chinon: Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Order of the Templars, Hughes de Péraldo, Visitor of France, and the Commanders of Cyprus, Aquitaine and Normandy had just been brought in. Other Knights of the same Order had already been confined there. They were all to be taken to Poictiers where were Pope Clement V. and Philippe le Bel, King of France; but several of them had fallen ill on the road, so the sovereign pontiff deputed three cardinals to proceed with the investigation at Chinon. Every one knows the result of these grave proceedings: the Order of the Templars was suppressed, and those who were prisoners at Chinon only left their cells to go to the stake at Paris. They had confessed their crimes in the question to which they had been put; but most of them retracted amidst the flames. This frightful execution took place in 1313.
Towards the end of the Fourteenth Century, Charles VI. ceded the duchy of Touraine and the county of Chinon to his brother Louis, Duke of Orleans, who was afterwards assassinated by order of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. This period recalls the most mournful memories of our history. Our land was ravaged by bands of English, skilful to profit by our dissensions. At last the hour of deliverance has arrived. France will now see more prosperous days; and Charles VII., the Victorious, will stretch his sceptre over the territory formerly subject to his ancestor.
Charles VII. established his court at Chinon. Joan of Arc came to see him there and to inaugurate her extraordinary mission beneath the castle arches. Everybody knows the details of the heroine’s arrival at Chinon: how she recognized the disguised king in the midst of his courtiers, revealed a secret known only to himself and God, showed herself full of confidence in the cause that she was to make triumphant and finally succeeded in inspiring the hearts of others with the enthusiasm that overflowed her own.