Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country — Story, Setting & Ideas

account of the Loire and of the towns along its banks must naturally have for its chief mention Touraine and the long line of splendid feudal and Renaissance châteaux which reflect themselves so gloriously in its current.

The Loire possesses a certain fascination and charm which many other more commercially great rivers entirely lack, and, while the element of absolute novelty cannot perforce be claimed for it, it has the merit of appealing largely to the lover of the romantic and the picturesque.

A French writer of a hundred years ago dedicated his work on Touraine to "Le Baron de Langeais, le Vicomte de Beaumont, le Marquis de Beauregard, le Comte de Fontenailles, le Comte de Jouffroy-Gonsans, le Duc de Luynes, le Comte de Vouvray, le Comte de Villeneuve, _et als._;" and he might have continued with a directory of all the descendants of the _noblesse_ of an earlier age, for he afterward grouped them under the general category of "_Propriétaires des fortresses et châteaux les plus remarquables--au point de vue historique ou architectural_."

He was fortunate in being able, as he said, to have had access to their "_papiers de famille_," their souvenirs, and to have been able to interrogate them in person.

Most of his facts and his gossip concerning the personalities of the later generations of those who inhabited these magnificent establishments have come down to us through later writers, and it is fortunate that this should be the case, since the present-day aspect of the châteaux is ever changing, and one who views them to-day is chagrined when he discovers, for instance, that an iron-trussed, red-tiled wash-house has been built on the banks of the Cosson before the magnificent château of Chambord, and that somewhere within the confines of the old castle at Loches a shopkeeper has hung out his shingle, announcing a newly discovered dungeon in his own basement, accidentally come upon when digging a well.

Balzac, Rabelais, and Descartes are the leading literary celebrities of Tours, and Balzac's "Le Lys dans la Vallée" will give one a more delightful insight into the old life of the Tourangeaux than whole series of guide-books and shelves of dry histories.

Blois and its counts, Tours and its bishops, and Amboise and its kings, to say nothing of Fontevrault, redolent of memories of the Plantagenets, Nantes and its famous "Edict," and its equally infamous "Revocation," have left vivid impress upon all students of French history. Others will perhaps remember Nantes for Dumas's brilliant descriptions of the outcome of the Breton conspiracy.

All of us have a natural desire to know more of historic ground, and whether we make a start by entering the valley of the Loire at the luxurious midway city of Tours, and follow the river first to the sea and then to the source, or make the journey from source to mouth, or vice versa, it does not matter in the least. We traverse the same ground and we meet the same varying conditions as we advance a hundred kilometres in either direction.

Tours, for example, stands for all that is typical of the sunny south. Prune and palm trees thrust themselves forward in strong contrast to the cider-apples of the lower Seine. Below Tours one is almost at the coast, and the _tables d'hôte_ are abundantly supplied with sea-food of all sorts. Above Tours the Orléannais is typical of a certain well-to-do, matter-of-fact existence, neither very luxurious nor very difficult.

Nevers is another step and resembles somewhat the opulence of Burgundy as to conditions of life, though the general aspect of the city, as well as a great part of its history, is Italian through and through.

The last great step begins at Le Puy, in the great volcanic _Massif Centrale_, where conditions of life, if prosperous, are at least harder than elsewhere.

Such are the varying characteristics of the towns and cities through which the Loire flows. They run the whole gamut from gay to earnest and solemn; from the ease and comfort of the country around Tours, almost sub-tropical in its softness, to the grime and smoke of busy St. Etienne, and the chilliness and rigours of a mountain winter at Le Puy.

These districts are all very full of memories of events which have helped to build up the solidarity of France of to-day, though the Nantois still proudly proclaims himself a Breton, and the Tourangeau will tell you that his is the tongue, above all others, which speaks the purest French,--and so on through the whole category, each and every citizen of a _petit pays_ living up to his traditions to the fullest extent possible.

In no other journey in France, of a similar length, will one see as many varying contrasts in conditions of life as he will along the length of the Loire, the broad, shallow river which St. Martin, Charles Martel, and Louis XI., the typical figures of church, arms, and state, came to know so well.

Du Bellay, a poet of the Renaissance, has sung the praises of the Loire in a manner unapproached by any other topographical poet, if one may so call him, for that is what he really was in this particular instance.

There is a great deal of patriotism in it all, too, and certainly no sweet singer of the present day has even approached these lines, which are eulogistic without being fulsome and fervent without being lurid.

The verses have frequently been rendered into English, but the following is as good as any, and better than most translations, though it is one of those fragments of "newspaper verse" whose authors are lost in obscurity.

"Mightier to me the house my fathers made, Than your audacious heads, O Halls of Rome! More than immortal marbles undecayed, The thin sad slates that cover up my home; More than your Tiber is my Loire to me, More Palatine my little Lyré there; And more than all the winds of all the sea, The quiet kindness of the Angevin air."

In history the Loire valley is rich indeed, from the days of the ancient Counts of Touraine to those of Mazarin, who held forth at Nevers. Touraine has well been called the heart of the old French monarchy.

Provincial France has a charm never known to Paris-dwellers. Balzac and Flaubert were provincials, and Dumas was a city-dweller,--and there lies the difference between them.

Balzac has written most charmingly of Touraine in many of his books, in "Le Lys dans la Vallée" and "Le Curé de Tours" in particular; not always in complimentary terms, either, for he has said that the Tourangeaux will not even inconvenience themselves to go in search of pleasure. This does not bespeak indolence so much as philosophy, so most of us will not cavil. George Sand's country lies a little to the southward of Touraine, and Berry, too, as the authoress herself has said, has a climate "_souple et chaud, avec pluie abondant et courte_."

The architectural remains in the Loire valley are exceedingly rich and varied. The feudal system is illustrated at its best in the great walled château at Angers, the still inhabited and less grand château at Langeais, the ruins at Cinq-Mars, and the very scanty remains of Plessis-les-Tours.

The ecclesiastical remains are quite as great. The churches are, many of them, of the first rank, and the great cathedrals at Nantes, Angers, Tours, and Orleans are magnificent examples of the church-builders' art in the middle ages, and are entitled to rank among the great cathedrals, if not actually of the first class.

With modern civic and other public buildings, the case is not far different. Tours has a gorgeous Hôtel de Ville, its architecture being of the most luxuriant of modern French Renaissance, while the railway stations, even, at both Tours and Orleans, are models of what railway stations should be, and in addition are decoratively beautiful in their appointments and arrangements,--which most railway stations are not.

Altogether, throughout the Loire valley there is an air of prosperity which in a more vigorous climate is often lacking. This in spite of the alleged tendency in what is commonly known as a relaxing climate toward _laisser-aller_.

Finally, the picturesque landscape of the Loire is something quite different from the harder, grayer outlines of the north. All is of the south, warm and ruddy, and the wooded banks not only refine the crudities of a flat shore-line, but form a screen or barrier to the flowering charms of the examples of Renaissance architecture which, in Touraine, at least, are as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa.

Starting at Gien, the valley of the Loire begins to offer those monumental châteaux which have made its fame as the land of castles. From the old fortress-château of Gien to the Château de Clisson, or the Logis de la Duchesse Anne at Nantes, is one long succession of florid masterpieces, not to be equalled elsewhere.

The true château region of Touraine--by which most people usually comprehend the Loire châteaux--commences only at Blois. Here the edifices, to a great extent, take on these superfine residential attributes which were the glory of the Renaissance period of French architecture.

Both above and below Touraine, at Montrichard, at Loches, and Beaugency, are still to be found scattering examples of feudal fortresses and donjons which are as representative of their class as are the best Norman structures of the same era, the great fortresses of Arques, Falaise, Domfront, and Les Andelys being usually accounted as the types which gave the stimulus to similar edifices elsewhere.

In this same versatile region also, beginning perhaps with the Orléannais, are a vast number of religious monuments equally celebrated. For instance, the church of St. Benoit-sur-Loire is one of the most important Romanesque churches in all France, and the cathedral of St. Gatien, with its "bejewelled façade," at Tours, the twin-spired St. Maurice at Angers, and even the pompous, and not very good Gothic, edifice at Orleans (especially noteworthy because its crypt is an ancient work anterior to the Capetian dynasty) are all wonderfully interesting and imposing examples of mediæval ecclesiastical architecture.

Three great tributaries enter the Loire below Tours, the Cher, the Indre, and the Vienne. The first has for its chief attractions the Renaissance châteaux St. Aignan and Chenonceaux, the Roman remains of Chabris, Thézée, and Larçay, the Romanesque churches of Selles and St. Aignan, and the feudal donjon of Montrichard. The Indre possesses the château of Azay-le-Rideau and the sombre fortresses of Montbazon and Loches; while the Vienne depends for its chief interest upon the galaxy of fortress-châteaux at Chinon.

The Loire is a mighty river and is navigable for nearly nine hundred kilometres of its length, almost to Le Puy, or, to be exact, to the little town of Vorey in the Department of the Haute Loire.

At Orleans, Blois, or Tours one hardly realizes this, much less at Nevers. The river appears to be a great, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough water in its bed to make a respectable current, leaving its beds and bars of _sable_ and _cailloux_ bare to the sky.

The scarcity of water, except at occasional flood, is the principal and obvious reason for the absence of water-borne traffic, even though a paternal ministerial department of the government calls the river navigable.

At the times of the _grandes crues_ there are four metres or more registered on the big scale at the Pont d'Ancenis, while at other times it falls to less than a metre, and when it does there is a mere rivulet of water which trickles through the broad river-bottom at Chaumont, or Blois, or Orleans. Below Ancenis navigation is not so difficult, but the current is more strong.

From Blois to Angers, on the right bank, extends a long dike which carries the roadway beside the river for a couple of hundred kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. The only thing usually seen on the bosom of the river, save an occasional fishing punt, is one of those great flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships, such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire pictures, for conditions of traffic on the river have not greatly changed.

Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those one finds on the rivers of the east or north, or on the great canals, it is only about a quarter of the usual size; so, in spite of its great navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is to be considered more as a picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial proposition.

Where the great canals join the river at Orleans, and from Chatillon to Roanne, the traffic increases, though more is carried by the canal-boats on the _Canal Latéral_ than by the barges on the Loire.

It is only on the Loire between Angers and Nantes that there is any semblance of river traffic such as one sees on most of the other great waterways of Europe. There is a considerable traffic, too, which descends the Maine, particularly from Angers downward, for Angers with its Italian skies is usually thought of, and really is to be considered, as a Loire town, though it is actually on the banks of the Maine some miles from the Loire itself.

One thousand or more bateaux make the ascent to Angers from the Loire at La Pointe each year, all laden with a miscellaneous cargo of merchandise. The Sarthe and the Loir also bring a notable agricultural traffic to the greater Loire, and the smaller confluents, the Dive, the Thouet, the Authion, and the Layon, all go to swell the parent stream until, when it reaches Nantes, the Loire has at last taken on something of the aspect of a well-ordered and useful stream, characteristics which above Nantes are painfully lacking. Because of its lack of commerce the Loire is in a certain way the most noble, magnificent, and aristocratic river of France; and so, too, it is also in respect to its associations of the past.

It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; it has not the burning activity of the Seine as it bears its thousands of boat-loads of produce and merchandise to and from the Paris market; it has not the prettiness of the Thames, nor the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but in a way it combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone that is all its own, as it sweeps along through its countless miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best of mediæval and Renaissance France, the period which built up the later monarchy and, who shall not say, the present prosperous republic.

Throughout most of the river's course, one sees, stretching to the horizon, row upon row of staked vineyards with fruit and leaves in luxuriant abundance and of all rainbow colours. The peasant here, the worker in the vineyards, is a picturesque element. He is not particularly brilliant in colouring, but he is usually joyous, and he invariably lives in a well-kept and brilliantly environed habitation and has an air of content and prosperity amid the well-beloved treasures of his household.

The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has said, "It is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream ... a wide river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company."

The Frenchman himself is more flowery: "_C'est la plus noble rivière de France. Son domaine est immense et magnifique._"

THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF THE LOIRE VALLEY AND THEIR CAPITALS

Bretagne Rennes Anjou Angers Touraine Tours Orléannais Orleans Berry Bourges Nivernais Nevers Bourbonnais Moulins Lyonnais Lyon Bourgogne Dijon Auvergne Clermont-Ferrand Languedoc Toulouse

The Loire is the longest river in France, and the only one of the four great rivers whose basin or watershed lies wholly within French territory. It moreover traverses eleven provinces. It rises in a fissure of granite rock at the foot of the Gerbier-de-Jonc, a volcanic cone in the mountains of the Vivarais, a hundred kilometres or more south of Lyons. In three kilometres, approximately two miles, the little torrent drops a thousand feet, after receiving to its arms a tiny affluent coming from the Croix de Monteuse.

For twelve kilometres the river twists and turns around the base of the Vivarais mountains, and finally enters a gorge between the rocks, and mingles with the waters of the little Lac d'Issarles, entering for the first time a flat lowland plain like that through which its course mostly runs.

The monument-crowned pinnacles of Le Puy and the inverted bowl of Puy-de-Dôme rise high above the plain and point the way to Roanne, where such activity as does actually take place upon the Loire begins.

Navigation, classed officially as "_flottable_," merely, has already begun at Vorey, just below Le Puy, but the traffic is insignificant.

Meantime the streams coming from the direction of St. Etienne and Lyons have been added to the Loire, but they do not much increase its bulk. St. Galmier, the _source_ dear to patrons of _tables d'hôte_ on account of its palatable mineral water, which is about the only decent drinking-water one can buy at a reasonable price, lies but a short distance away to the right.

At St. Rambert the plain of Forez is entered, and here the stream is enriched by numberless rivulets which make their way from various sources through a thickly wooded country.

From Roanne onward, the _Canal Latéral_ keeps company with the Loire to Chatillon, not far from Orleans.

Before reaching Nevers, the _Canal du Nivernais_ branches off to the left and joins the Loire with the Yonne at Auxerre. Daudet tells of the life of the _Canal du Nivernais_, in "La Belle Nivernaise," in a manner too convincingly graphic for any one else to attempt the task, in fiction or out of it. Like the Tartarin books, "La Belle Nivernaise" is distinctly local, and forms of itself an excellent guide to a little known and little visited region.

At Nevers the topography changes, or rather, the characteristics of the life of the country round about change, for the topography, so far as its profile is concerned, remains much the same for three-fourths the length of this great river. Nevers, La Charité, Sancerre, Gien, and Cosne follow in quick succession, all reminders of a historic past as vivid as it was varied.

From the heights of Sancerre one sees a wonderful history-making panorama before him. Cæsar crossed the Loire at Gien, the Franks forded the river at La Charité, when they first went against Aquitaine, and Charles the Bald came sadly to grief on a certain occasion at Pouilly.

It is here that the Loire rises to its greatest flood, and hundreds of times, so history tells, from 490 to 1866, the fickle river has caused a devastation so great and terrible that the memory of it is not yet dead.

This hardly seems possible of this usually tranquil stream, and there have always been scoffers.

Madame de Sévigné wrote in 1675 to M. de Coulanges (but in her case perhaps it was mere well-wishing), "_La belle Loire, elle est un peu sujette à se déborder, mais elle en est plus douce_."

Ancient writers were wont to consider the inundations of the Loire as a punishment from Heaven, and even in later times the superstition--if it was a superstition--still remained.

In 1825, when thousands of charcoal-burners (_charbonniers_) were all but ruined, they petitioned the government for assistance. The official who had the matter in charge, and whose name--fortunately for his fame--does not appear to have been recorded, replied simply that the flood was a periodical condition of affairs which the Almighty brought about as occasion demanded, with good cause, and for this reason he refused all assistance.

Important public works have done much to prevent repetitions of these inundations, but the danger still exists, and always, in a wet season, there are those dwellers along the river's banks who fear the rising flood as they would the plague.

Chatillon, with its towers; Gien, a busy hive of industry, though with a historic past; Sully; and St. Benoit-sur-Loire, with its unique double transepted church; all pass in rapid review, and one enters the ancient capital of the Orléannais quite ready for the new chapter which, in colouring, is to be so different from that devoted to the upper valley.