Location: Les Andelys Map
Constructed: 1196–1198 by Richard the Lionheart
Open: 10am- 1pm, 2- 6pm March 15- Nov 15
Closed: Tuesdays, May 1
Entrance Fee: 3 Euros, Children: Free
Château-Gaillard is a fortified castle built at the end of the
twelfth century, now in ruins, whose remains stand in the French town of
Andelys in the heart of the Norman Vexin, in the department of Eure, in
the Normandy region.
Its construction by the King of England and
Duke of Normandy, Richard the Lionheart, is part of the struggle that
the kings of France and the kings of England, then Dukes of Normandy,
have been fighting since the 1060s. The square locked, with other
castles and fortified works, the valley of the Seine. Its capture in
1204, announces the loss of Normandy and the end of the Plantagenet
empire.
The castle is the subject of a classification as
historical monuments by the list of 1862. Various adjoining plots of
land were also classified in 1926, 1927 and 1928.
The ruins of Château-Gaillard are located on a limestone cliff overlooking a large meander of the Seine and the town of Andelys, in the French department of Eure, in France.
The construction of the fortress is part of the struggle fought since
the 1060s by the kings of France and the kings of England, then dukes of
Normandy. In 1189, Richard I, known as Richard the Lionheart, inherited
the property and territorial possessions of his father Henry II
Plantagenet, divided between France and England. King Philip Augustus,
until then an ally of Richard, moves away from him. However, they left
together in the winter of 1190-1191 for the Holy Land as part of the
third crusade.
However, after a few months, Philip Augustus
returns to his kingdom and takes advantage of Richard's absence to begin
the conquest of the Duchy of Normandy with the complicity of Richard's
own brother, Jean sans Terre. As soon as he returns, Richard sets out
with energy to regain supremacy on the eastern border of his duchy of
Normandy. In 1194, after defeating the Capetian army at Fréteval near
Vendôme, the King of England concluded with the latter the treaty of
Issoudun according to which he ratified the concession of Gisors,
Gaillon and Vernon that his brother Jean sans Terre had already lost
during his absence. The cession of these three places to the King of
France weakens the eastern border of the Duchy of Normandy placed on the
Epte and leaving Rouen, its capital, which is directly threatened.
Richard then decides to build in front of Rouen, a large fortress to
block the right bank of the Seine valley and prohibit passage by river.
He chose the Andely seam between Vernon and Rouen, located at the end of
an important meander of the river. The entire fortified complex costs
46,000 pounds, the equivalent of five years of income from the duchy,
exhausting the resources of the Plantagenet state. To lock the valley of
the Seine, in addition to the construction of Château-Gaillard, Richard
founded the town of Petit-Andely, fortified the island located in the
middle of the river and blocked the course of it.
The choice of the Andelys by Richard poses a double problem: on the one hand, the place is at the time, property of the archbishop of Rouen Gautier de Coutances; on the other hand, the duke has no right to fortify the place according to the terms of the Treaty of Gaillon of 1196. However, he has no choice if he wants to defend the Seine Valley, so he goes overboard. This earned him the wrath of Archbishop Gautier who threw the ban on Normandy, until a compromise was finally found in October 1197: Richard offered the prelate several ducal lands in exchange for the possession of the Andelys, including the port of Dieppe, source of important income. This exchange is particularly favorable to the Church.
The Philippide, work of Guillaume le Breton, is the main source on
this major event in the history of the castle. After the death of
Richard the Lionheart in April 1199, his younger brother John without
Land succeeded him on the ducal throne. Philippe Auguste took advantage
of this succession to relaunch the conquest of the Duchy of Normandy.
Under the pressure of the legate Peter of Capua, the king concluded a
peace treaty on May 22, 1200, known as the Treaty of the Goulet.
Philippe Auguste retains his last conquests, in particular the Norman
Vexin, with the exception of Château-Gaillard. This peace is broken in
1202. The king resumed the offensive and in August 1203, he seized the
island of Andely (with its fort) and the town of Couture, abandoned by
its population. The boom is destroyed, making navigation on the Seine
possible.
Further on, the Anglo-Normans abandon the castle of
Vaudreuil without a fight, then it is the turn of the castle of Radepont
to fall. The road to Rouen is then open for the French. Thus, when in
September, Philip undertakes the siege of the castle, the fortress no
longer has much strategic interest, even if it remains for the Normans
an important symbol. It is just as important for the King of France who
understands (it is the castle of Richard the Lionheart) the necessity of
taking it down.
Philippe Auguste surrounds the fortress with a
double circumvallation ditch that he bristles with 14 belfries. But
aware of the formidable character of the fortress, the King of France is
counting above all on a blockade that will starve the garrison and the
population entrenched inside to subdue Château-Gaillard. Roger de Lacy
commands the garrison and shows himself ready to resist while a relief
army sent by Jean sans Terre unblocks him. To preserve food supplies,
the 1,200 inhabitants of the Couture (Petit Andely), who had found
refuge in the castle, were driven out in December. After having let most
of it pass, the French besiegers pushed the rest back. Several hundred
of them, packed in the second enclosure, exposed to the cold of winter,
were starving. This is how they were represented in the sinister
painting The Useless Mouths, painted by Tattegrain in 1894. Finally, the
French let them pass and they dispersed.
But it is not the famine
that ensures the King of France the capture of Château-Gaillard. He
takes advantage of the "errors in the very design of the fortress, which
will appear as the assault progresses". The French first attack the big
tower that dominates the advanced work. Its collapse forces the
defenders to retreat into the castle proper.
Legend has it that
the French entered the barnyard through the latrines; Adolphe Poignant
(nineteenth century) tells that it was Lambert Cadoc's troops who
stormed it one night. However, in the light of Guillaume le Breton's
account, they would actually have entered through one of the low windows
of the chapel that Jean sans Terre had built very inappropriately. The
legend of the latrines is still taken up as a true story today by
various unspecialized sources, such as popularization books or internet
sites. This story would have been invented after the fact, because it
strikes the imagination by introducing funny things into a dramatic
situation and, above all, because the truth is somewhat embarrassing for
the image of the monarchy of divine right, a chapel normally being an
inviolable sanctuary.
After entering the chapel, the attackers
then lead into the barnyard while the defenders lock themselves in the
dungeon. But as a sleeping bridge connects the barnyard to the keep, the
French miners do not have great difficulty approaching the door. A jet
engine finally sinks it. The garrison comprising 36 knights and 117
sergeants or crossbowmen surrendered on March 6, 1204. The siege will
have cost the lives of four knights. Lambert Cadoc, mercenary leader of
Philippe Auguste, was one of the great architects of this victory. The
King of France entrusted him with the custody of the castle. The king
now has the free field to complete the conquest of the Duchy of
Normandy. Conquest facilitated by the moral decline among the
Anglo-Normans, following the fall of Château-Gaillard. The duchy falls
entirely in June 1204.
In 1314, two of the three daughters-in-law of Philip IV the Fair (1268-1314) were locked up in Château-Gaillard after the Nesle tower affair, Marguerite of Burgundy, adulterous wife of the heir to the throne Louis of France (future Louis X the Hutin) and Blanche of Burgundy, wife of Charles of France (3rd son of Philip, future Charles IV the Fair). The first died there the following year, perhaps strangled on the orders of her husband or probably as a result of the poor conditions of her detention, while the second, after spending ten years in the fortress, was "authorized" to retire to the convent of Maubuisson, where she died in 1326.
In April 1356, the king of Navarre, Charles the Bad, arrested, during
the feast of Rouen which takes place at the castle by King John the
Good, is briefly imprisoned there, before being transferred to the
Louvre, then to Arleux, from where he escapes. In 1413, Charles VI, out
of money, reduced the salary of the governor of the Place des
trois-quarts.
During the Hundred Years' War, Château-Gaillard
suffered several sieges. On December 9, 1419, it fell into the hands of
the English after sixteen months of siege and this because the last rope
necessary to raise the water from the well had broken. It was the last
Norman stronghold that still resisted the English troops of Henry V.
La Hire, companion of Joan of Arc, seized it by surprise in 1431 on
behalf of the Armagnacs.
"In this season Étienne de Vignolles,"
says la Hire, "set out from Louviers with a large company of
men-at-arms, who crossed the river Seine in boats, and came to take by
climbing Chasteau-Gaillard, which is seven leagues distant from Roüen,
sitting on a rock near the said river Seine, where they found the sire
of Barbazen (Guillaume de Barbazan, captain of Charles VII) prisoner of
the King of England, who had been taken in the city of Melun, of which
he is the captain. And the said Barbazen was brought before the King
(Charles VII), who was very happy about his deliverance"
- Berry,
Chronological history of the King Charles VII
A few months later,
the fortress is again under English control, and its guard entrusted to
Lord Talbot. In September 1449, King Charles VII personally came to lay
siege to the fortress and regained possession after five weeks of siege.
During the Wars of Religion, the leaguers shut themselves up in the castle then under the command of Nicolas II de La Barre de Nanteuil. The troops of King Henry IV seized it in 1591 after almost two years of siege. In 1598, the States General of Normandy asked the king to demolish the building in order to prevent a new armed band from retreating there to plunder the region. Henry IV agrees. In 1603, the Capuchins of Grand-Andeli were authorized to take stones for the repair of their convent. Authorization was also given seven years later to the penitents of Saint-François du Petit-Andeli, then those of Rouen. The two religious communities are primarily tackling the curtains of the barnyard and the advanced work. The destruction was interrupted in 1611 and then resumed under the aegis of Richelieu. The cardinal orders the levelling of the keep and the enclosure of the high court. According to Bernard Beck, it was Louis XIII who, in 1616, fearing that his half-brother the Duke of Vendôme, Caesar of Vendôme, in rebellion against him, would seize the castle, would have hastened the destruction.
In 1862, Château-Gaillard was classified as a historical monument. He
enters the tourist guides extolling the romantic ruins of Normandy, in
the same way as the abbey of Jumièges and the castles of Lillebonne,
Gisors or Tancarville. In 1885-1886, the architect Gabriel Malençon,
then around 1900, the archaeologist Léon Coutil, were in charge of
drawing a survey of the remains. Several excavations and surveys have
made it possible to get to know the castle better. If his plan is now
well known, there are still uncertainties about its history and the
origin of certain architectural improvements.
These romantic
ruins hosted in 2017 the International large format painting Competition
in Normandy.
Richard installs the castle on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Seine
of about 90 meters. However, the site is not the highest point in the
sector since to the south-east there is a plateau which dominates it by
50 meters.
The defensive system far exceeded the only fortress
still visible today and literally blocked the river. At the foot of the
castle, the fortified village of La Couture (embryo of Little Andely)
had been created. From there, a bridge crossed the Seine and supported
on the river island called the Castle, which hosted a small polygonal
castle (the castle of the island). A few hundred meters upstream of the
river, a triple row of piles prevented the descent of the ships (the
boom). Two castle mottes served as outposts: the tower of Cléry, on the
plateau, and that of Boutavant in the valley, of which some remains can
still be seen on the island of La Tour. In the center, a magisterial and
impregnable observation post, the Château-Gaillard (also called Château
de la Roche- de la Roque in Norman -—. The set was intended to lock the
loop of the Seine upstream of Rouen.
This aspect is quite well known thanks to the multiple excavations
and the accounts of the Normandy Exchequer.
Pressed by the
imminent return of the war, the construction of the castle takes less
than two years and in 1198, the work is completed. The result impressed
contemporaries. Hence the comments lent to Richard the Lionheart: "How
beautiful my one-year-old daughter is" and another time: "What a
gaillard castle! »
Château-Gaillard is made of stone. It stands
out for the complexity of its plan with a combination of staggered
defenses in depth, facing the plateau from which the attack was supposed
to arise. The castle does not resemble the fortresses built or improved
in the first half of the twelfth century, by King Henry I. The latter
were generally presented in the form of a large stone rampart enclosing
a vast space; a square keep or a fortified gate completed the defensive
device. Château-Gaillard is organized in multiple volumes, nested or
almost independent of each other. The objective is clearly to multiply
the obstacles in order to exhaust the attacker. This arrangement also
aims to hinder the progress of the machines and requires fewer
defenders.
The different parts of the castle are :
the keep,
located in an upper courtyard and constituting an ultimate refuge in the
heart of the fortress, is one of the most original and best preserved
elements. It is in the form of a circular tower on three quarters, but
with an angle to the southeast, and reinforced, on the one hand by a
spur, and on the other hand by buttresses in the form of inverted
pyramids, except on the western part on the cliff side. These buttresses
joined in pointed arches that supported machicolations. These last
elements disappeared with the upper part of the keep which was leveled
in the seventeenth century. The keep had three levels but the entrance
was via the first floor to the north-west via a long stone staircase now
disappeared. The geminate opening of bays, on the cliff side, indicates
that the tower had a residential function in addition to its defensive
role ;
the upper courtyard, which houses the keep, is surrounded by
an enclosure (shirt) and an external moat. The upper courtyard also had
a large hall (aula), a bread oven and an armory. Cellars were dug in the
rock of the ditch, at the foot of the shirt, and they could ensure the
supply of a garrison for two years. Quite well preserved, the
ellipsoidal-shaped shirt is an original part. Indeed, it has, on the
plateau side, a festoon flanking thanks to contiguous towers,
eliminating any blind spot at the foot of the wall, and ensuring better
resistance to large projectiles and probably supporting machicolations.
This innovation was not imitated. On the cliff side, on the other hand,
the enclosure shows a flat and not very thick wall and partially merges
with the keep. Windows pierce the wall ;
the lower courtyard
encompasses the upper courtyard and its keep. It was surrounded by a dry
ditch equipped with obstacles, surmounted by a polygonal rampart and
towers, of which not much remains. A stone chapel, on the cliff side,
and domestic buildings were located inside ;
the advanced defensive
work of polygonal shape is provided with circular flanking. It forms an
almost independent part of the castle since only a movable bridge
spanning a moat connected it to the barnyard. Its purpose was to
strengthen the defense on the most vulnerable side of Château-Gaillard,
that is to say on the side of the overhanging plateau. It also served as
an entrance to the castle, which makes it look like a barbican.
All the elements of the castle are isolated by a moat.
A 120-meter
well (20 m below the level of the Seine) is dug in the limestone soil of
the lower courtyard, while cisterns store water in the upper courtyard
and the advanced structure. Cellars arranged under the barnyard and
accessible by the south ditch surrounding the shirt ensure the
conservation of the foodstuffs necessary to support a long siege.
Notes on its design
For contemporaries, it is an impregnable
fortress.
However, by passive design, Château-Gaillard cannot
exercise an active defense. In addition, it was dominated to the
southeast by a plateau where war machines could be installed.
For
the archaeologist Annie Renoux, Château-Gaillard is "both archaic and
innovative". Archaic by its castral plate, innovative by its learned
geometry. Scholars have often explained that its original architecture
was influenced by the Syrian castles that Richard had known during the
third crusade. This origin is discussed today, but it does not prevent
some elements from appearing decidedly modern for the time. This is
particularly the case of the scalloped wall, the system of
machicolations on pointed arches carried by inverted buttresses and the
regular flanking of the curtains by circular towers. The both
residential and defensive function of the keep will be an idea pursued
by Philippe Auguste.
Some figures
Length: 200 m
Width: 80 m
Altitude: about 100 m (that of the Seine is 10 m away)
Cost: 45,000
pounds for the entire fortification program (castle with the outposts,
the bridge over the Seine and the town of Couture), the equivalent of
the annual pay of 7,000 infantry
Weight: 4,700 tons of stone
Dungeon: 8 m in internal diameter, 18 m in height
Walls: 3-4 meters
thick
In 2021, Thomas Risch is making a documentary about the fortified castle entitled Château-Gaillard, an impregnable fortress