Short Trips Part 3

We visited Chateau Langeais which has a bit of history and some interesting artifacts.

Wooden wall sculpture

Andiron

Noble woman

Portable Throne - the back folds down to become a writing desk for the King

Door Lock

Now for a bit of history.  The wedding of Anne de Bretagne (Anne of Brittany) and Charles VIII took place here.  Their emblem is below.  The K is for Charles as in Latin.

Here are their portraits actually painted at the time

Banquet Hall

There is a recreation of the wedding.  Anne was wed by proxy at the age of 14 to Maximilian of Austria.  She was a critical key to power as she owned the whole of Brittany.  However, Charles VIII and his ministers arranged to have the Pope annul that marriage and instead married her at age 16 in a secret ceremony at 6am with only a few present.  One of those present was the Duke of Orleans.  When Charles hit his head on a lintel inside Chateau Amboise on his way to a tennis match and died quite young, Anne was obligated by the marriage contract to marry his successor.  It turned out to be the same Duke of Orleans who became Louis XII.

A stunning chest - when the court traveled, everything was transported in chests.

Then it was on to Cinq Mars.  There is not much to the interior.  The grounds are lovingly tended by a couple who are artists and whose parents were also artists of some renown in Paris.
The destiny was tragic of the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, a favorite of Louis XIII who was beheaded for high treason at the age of 22.  In 1639 Louis XIII had no favorite. Richelieu had introduced the young Cinq-Mars to Louis, hoping the king would take Cinq-Mars as a lover, apparently with success; Tallemant des Réaux in his Historiettes (chapter on Louis XIII)  cites Fontrailles,  who relates a scene where the king and his minion Cinq-Mars went to bed together. The cardinal believed he could easily control Cinq-Mars. Instead, Cinq-Mars pressed the king for important favours and tried to convince the king to have Richelieu executed. Cinq-Mars brought some French nobility into revolt, but the effort failed. He also tried to get support for the rebellion from Philip IV, the king of Spain; Richelieu's spy service caught him doing so. Richelieu then had Cinq-Mars imprisoned and beheaded.  Tallemant relates that the king showed no emotions concerning the execution: he said "Je voudrais bien voir la grimace qu'il fait à cette heure sur cet échafaud" (I would like to see the grimace he is now making on that scaffold).

Ron and Lola in the former moat.  You can observe how high the walls are now, so the moat was quite deep.

The castle is built on a rocky spur, which was a configuration common in medieval times. The round towers date back to the Crusades.  At the foot of the spur stands a wall, a first defense, enclosing an area still named the "Jewry" where a community of Jewish merchants may have lived under the protection of the Lord.  The area below is the former Jewry.