It was erected by César de Chastellux under the Restoration, to replace the tomb torn down by the Chapter in the fifteenth century. This desecration, by churchmen themselves, one must remember, took place in spite of the fact that a Chastellux was even then a dignitary of the church.
Chastellux, beyond its magnificent chateau, is an indefinable, unconvincing little bourg, but from the very moment one sets foot within its quaintly named Hotel de Maréchal de Chastellux he, or she, is permeated with the very spirit of romance and mediævalism. The bridge which crosses the Cure in the middle of the village owns to the ripe old age of three hundred and fifty years, and is still rendering efficient service. This is something mature for a bridge, even in France, where many are doing their daily work as they have for centuries. Will the modern “suspension” affairs do as well? That’s what nobody knows! The hotel, or auberge rather, can not be less aged than the bridge, though the manner in which it is conducted is not at all antiquated.
A rocky, jagged pedestal, of a height of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, holds aloft the fine mass of the Chateau de Chastellux. For eight centuries this fine old pile was in the making and, though manifestly non-contemporary as to its details, it holds itself together in a remarkably consistent manner and presents an ensemble and silhouette far more satisfactory to view than many a more popular historic monument of its class. Its great round towers, their coiffes and the pignons and gables of the roof, give it all a cachet which is so striking that one forgives, or ignores the fact that it is after all a work of various epochs.
Visitors here are welcome. One may stroll the corridors and apartments, the vast halls and the courtyard as fancy wills, except that one is always discreetly ciceroned by a guardian who may be a man, a woman, or even a small child. There is none of the espionage system about the surveillance, however, and one can but feel welcome. Blazons in stone and wood and tapestries are everywhere. They are the best, or the worst, of their kind; one really doesn’t stop to think which; the effect is undeniably what one would wish, and surely no carping critic has any right to exercise his functions here. There is not the least cause to complain if the furnishings are of non-contemporary periods like the exterior adornments, because the certain stamp of sincerity and genuineness over all defies undue criticism.
The Chateau de Chastellux dates, primarily, from the thirteenth century, with many fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century restorations or additions which are readily enough to be recognized. From its inception, the chateau has belonged to the family of Beauvoir-de-Chastellux, the cadet branch of Anseric-de-Montréal.
Practically triangular in form, as best served its original functions of a defensive habitation, this most theatrical of all Burgundian chateaux is flanked by four great attached towers. The Tour de l’Horloge is a massive rectangular pile of the fifteenth century; the Tour d’Amboise is a round tower dating from 1592; the Tour de l’Hermitage and the Tour des Archives, each of them, also round, are of the sixteenth century. In the disposition and massiveness of these towers alone the Chateau de Chastellux is unique. Another isolated tower, even more stupendous in its proportions, is known as the Tour Saint Jean, and is a donjon of the ideally acceptable variety, dating from some period anterior to the chateau proper.
Moat-surrounded, the chateau is only to be entered by crossing an ornamental waterway. One arrives at the actual entrance by the usual all-eyed roadway ending at the perron of the chateau where a simple bell-pull silently announces the ways and means of gaining entrance. The domestic appears at once and without questioning your right proceeds to do the honours as if it were for yourself alone that the place were kept open.
The chief and most splendid apartment is the Salle des Gardes, to a great extent restored, but typical of the best of fifteenth century workmanship and appointments. Its chimney-piece, as splendid in general effect as any to be seen in the Loire chateaux, is but a re-made affair, but follows the best traditions and encloses moreover fragments of fifteenth century sculptures which are authentically of that period. The cornice of this majestic apartment bears the Chastellux arms and those of their allied families, interwoven with the oft repeated inscription, Monréal à Sire de Chastellux. In this same Salle des Gardes are hung a pair of ancient Gobelins, and set into the floor is a dainty morsel of an antique mosaic found nearby.
The modern billiard-room, also shown to the inquisitive, contains portraits of the Chancelier d’Aguesseau and his wife, and its fittings – aside from the green baize tables and their accessories – are well carried out after the style of Louis XIII. Good taste, or bad, one makes no comment, save to suggest that the billiard tables look out of place.
In what the present dweller calls the Salon Rouge are portraits and souvenirs of a military ancestor Comte César de Chastellux, who, judging from his dress and cast of countenance, must have been a warrior bold of the conventional type.
After the Salle des Gardes the Grand Salon is the most effective apartment. Its wall and ceiling decorations are the same that were completed in 1696, and incorporated therein are fourteen portraits of the Sires and Comtes who one day lived and loved within these castle walls. These portraits are reproductions of others which were destroyed by the unchained devils of the French Revolution who made way with so much valuable documentary evidence from which one might build up French mediæval history anew. The village church contains several tombal monuments of the Chastellux.
The Chateau de Montréal, or Mont-Royal, so closely allied with the fortunes of the Chastellux, between Avallon and Chastellux, is built high on a mamelon overlooking the Seruin, and is one of the most ancient and curious places in Burgundy. The little town, of but five hundred inhabitants, is built up mostly of the material which came from one of the most ancient of the feudal chateaux of mid-France. This chateau was originally a primitive fortress, once the residence of Queen Brunhaut, the wife of the Roi d’Austrasie in 566. It was from this hill-top residence that the name Montréal has been evolved.
The sparse population of the place were benefited by special privileges from the earliest times and the cité movenageuse itself was endowed with many admirable examples of administrative and domestic architecture.
Of the Renaissance chateaux of the later seigneurs, here and there many portions remain built into other edifices, but there is no single example left which, as a whole, takes definite shape as a noble historical monument. There are a dozen old Renaissance house-fronts, with here and there a supporting tower or wall which is unquestionably of mediæval times and might tell thrilling stories could stones but speak.
In Renaissance annals Montréal was celebrated by the exploit of the Dame de Ragny (1590), who recaptured the place after it had been taken possession of by the Ligeurs during the absence of her husband, the governor.
At the entrance of the old bourg is a great gateway which originally led to the seigneurial enclosure. It is called the Port d’en Bas and has arches dating from the thirteenth century. Montréal and its Mediæval chateau was the cradle of the Anseric-de-Montréal family, who were dispossessed in 1255 to the profit of the Ducs de Bourgogne. It was to the cadet branch of this same family Chastellux once belonged.
To the west lies Vezelay, one of the most remarkable conglomerate piles of ancient masonry to be seen in France to-day. It was a most luxurious abode in mediæval times, and its great church, with its ornate portal and façade, ranks as one of the most celebrated in Europe.
Vezelay is on no well-worn tourist track; it is indeed chiefly unknown except to those who know well their ecclesiastical history. It was within this famous church that Saint Bernard awakened the fervour of the Crusade in the breast of Louis-le-Jeune. The abbey church saw, too, Philippe-Auguste and Richard Cœur-de-Lion start for their Crusades, and even Saint Louis came here before setting out from Aigues Mortes for the land of the Turk. This illustrious church quite crushes anything else in Vezelay by its splendour, but nevertheless the history of its other monuments has been great, and the part played by the miniscule city itself has been no less important in more mundane matters. Its mediæval trading-fairs
