VINCENNES AND CONFLANS

Vincennes is to-day little more than a dull, dirty Paris suburb; if anything its complexion is a deeper drab than that of Saint Denis, and to call the Bois de Vincennes a park “somewhat resembling the Bois de Boulogne,” as do the guidebooks, is ridiculous.

In reality Vincennes is nothing at all except a memory. There is to-day little suggestion of royal origin about the smug and murky surroundings of the Chateau de Vincennes; but nevertheless, it once was a royal residence, and the drama which unrolled itself within its walls was most vividly presented. A book might be written upon it, with the following as the chapter headings: “The Royal Residence,” “The Minimes of the Bois de Vincennes,” “Mazarin at Vincennes,” “The Prisoners of the Donjon,” “The Fêtes of the Revolution,” “The Death of the Duc d’Enghien,” “The Transformation of the Chateau and the Bois.”

Its plots are ready-made, but one has to take them on hearsay, for the old chateau does not open its doors readily to the stranger for the reason that it to-day ranks only as a military fortress, and an artillery camp is laid out in the quadrangle, intended, if need be, to aid in the defence of Paris. This is one of the things one hears about, but of which one may not have any personal knowledge.

The first reference to the name of Vincennes is in a ninth century charter, where it appears as Vilcenna. The foundation of the original chateau-fort on the present site is attributed to Louis VII, who, in 1164, having alienated a part of the neighbouring forest in favour of a body of monks, built himself a suburban rest-house under shelter of the pious walls of their convent.

Philippe Auguste, too, has been credited with being the founder of Vincennes; but, at all events, the chateau took on no royal importance until the reign of Saint Louis, who acquired the habit of dispensing justice to all comers seated beneath an oak in the near-by Forest of Joinville.

The erection of the later chateau was begun by Charles, Comte de Valois, brother of Philippe-le-Bel; and it was completed by Philippe VI of Valois, and his successor, Jean-le-Bon, between the years 1337 and 1370, when it became an entirely new manner of edifice from what it had been before. It was in this chateau that was born Charles V, to whom indeed it owes its completion in the form best known.

To-day, the outlines of the mass of the Chateau de Vincennes are considerably abbreviated from their former state. Originally it was quite regular in outline, its walls forming a rectangle flanked by nine towers, the great donjon which one sees to-day occupying the centre of one side. The chapel was begun in the reign of Francois I and terminated in that of Henri II. Its coloured glass, painted by Jean Cousin from the designs of Raphael, is notable.

The chapel at Vincennes, with the Saint Chapelle of the Palais de Justice at Paris, ranks as one of the most exquisite examples extant of French Gothic architecture. It was begun in 1379, but chiefly it is of the sixteenth century, since it was only completed in 1552. This chapel of the sixteenth century, and the two side wings flanking the tower of the reign of Louis XIV, make the Chateau de Vincennes a most precious specimen of mediaeval ecclesiastical and military architecture. If Napoleon had not cut down the height of the surrounding walls the comparison would be still more favourable. In the reproduction of the miniature from the Book of Hours of the Duc de Berry given herein one sees the perfect outlines of the fourteenth century edifice.

In later years, Louis XIII added considerably to the existing structure, but little is now to be seen of that edifice save the great tower and the chapel.

Charles IX, whose royal edict brought forth the bloody night of Saint Bartholomew in 1572, fell sick two years later in the Chateau de Vincennes. Calling his surgeon, Ambroise Pare, to his side he exclaimed: “My body burns with fever; I see the mangled Huguenots all about me; Holy Virgin, how they mock me; I wish, Pare, I had spared them.” And thus he died, abhorring the mother who had counselled him to commit this horrible deed.

The donjon of Vincennes was carried to its comparatively great height that it might serve as a tower of observation as well as a place of last retreat if in an attack the outer walls of the fortress should give way. Here at Vincennes a certain massiveness is noted in connection with the donjon, though the actual ground area which it covers is not very great; it was not like many donjons of the time, which were virtually smaller chateaux or fortresses enclosed within a greater.

Vincennes, in comparison with many other contemporary edifices, possessed a certain regularity of outline which was made possible by its favourable situation. When others were of fantastic form, they were usually so built because of the configuration of the land, or the nature of the soil. But here the land was flat, and, though the edifice and its dependencies covered no very extended area, they followed rectangular lines with absolute precision.

As its walls were of a thickness of three metres, it was a work easy of accomplishment for Louis XI to turn the chateau into a Prison of State, a use to which the first chateau had actually been put by the shutting up in it of Enguerrand de Marigny. Henri IV, in 1574, passed some solitary hours and days within its walls, and Mirabeau did the same in 1777. The Duc d’Enghien, under the First Empire, before his actual death by shooting, suffered sorely herein, while resting under an unjust suspicion.

In 1814-1815 the chateau became a great arsenal and general storehouse for the army. It was attacked by the Allies and besieged twice, but in vain. It was defended against the armies of Blucher by the Baron Daumesnil. Summoned to surrender his charge, “Jambe de Bois” (so called because he had lost a leg the year before) replied: “I will surrender when you surrender to me my leg.” A statue to this brave warrior is within the chateau, and commemorates further the fact that he capitulated only on terms laid down by himself out of his humane regard for the lives of friends and foes.

The ministers of Charles X, in 1830, had cause to regret the strength of the chateau walls; and Barbes, Blanqui and Raspail, in 1848, and various Republicans, who had been seized as dangerous elements of society after the Coup d’Etat of 1851, also here found an enforced hospitality. The Chateau de Vincennes had become a second Bastille.

The incident of the arrest and death of the Duc d’Enghien is one of the most dramatic in Napoleonic history. The scene was Vincennes. Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, son of the Prince de Conde, born at Chantilly in 1772, became, without just reason, suspected in connection with the Cadoudal-Pichegreu plot, and was seized by a squadron of cavalry at the Schloss Ettenheim in the Duchy of Baden and conducted to Vincennes. Here, after a summary judgment, he was shot at night in the moat behind the guardhouse. The obscurity of the night was so great that a lighted lantern was hung around the neck of the unfortunate man that the soldiers might the better see the mark at which they were to shoot.

Napoleon confided to Josephine, who repeated the secret to Madame de Remusat, that his political future demanded a coup d’Etat. On the morning of the execution, the emperor, awakening at five o’clock, said to Josephine: “By this time the Duc d’Enghien has passed from this life.”

The rest is history of that apologetic kind which is not often recorded.

In the chapel at Vincennes a commemorative tablet was placed, by the orders of Louis XVIII, in 1816, to mark the death of the young duke.

The Bois de Vincennes is not the fashionable parade ground of the Bois de Boulogne. On the whole it is a sad sort of a public park, and not at all fashionable, and not particularly attractive, though of a vast extent and possessed of a profoundly historic past of far more significance than that of its sweet sister by the opposite gates of Paris.

It contains ten hundred and sixty-nine hectares and was due originally to Louis XV, who sought to have a sylvan gateway to the city from the east. Under the Second Empire the park was considerably transformed, new roads and alleys traced, and an effort made to have it equal more nearly the beauty of the more popular Bois de Boulogne. It occupies the plateau lying between the Seine and the bend in the Marne, just above the junction of the two rivers.

There are some forty kilometres of roadway within the limits of the Bois de Vincennes, and a dozen kilometres or more of footpaths; but, since the military authorities have taken a portion for their own uses as a training ground, a shooting range and for the Batteries of La Faisanderie and Gravelle, it has been bereft of no small part of its former charm. There are three lakes in the Bois, the Lac de Sainte Mande, the Lac Daumesnil and the Lac de Gravelle.

A near neighbour of Vincennes is Conflans, another poor, rent relic of monarchial majesty. The Chateau de Conflans was situated at the juncture of the Seine and Marne, but, to-day, the immediate neighbourhood is so very unlovely and depressing that one can hardly believe that it ever pleased any one’s fancy, least of all that of a kingly castle builder.

Banal dwellings on all sides are Conflans’ chief characteristics to-day; but the old royal abode still lifts a long length of roof and wall to mark the spot where once stood the Chateau de Conflans in all its glory.

Conflans was at first the country residence of the Archbishops of Paris, and Saint Louis frequently went into retreat here. When Philippe-le-Bel acquired the property, he promptly gave it to the Comtesse d’Artois who made of it one of the “plus beaux castels du temps.” She decorated its long gallery, the portion of the edifice which exists to-day in the humble, emasculated form of a warehouse of some sort, in memory of her husband Othon. Here the countess held many historic receptions and ceremonies during which kings and princes frequently partook of her hospitality.

After the death of the countess, the French king made his residence at Conflans, and Charles VI, when dauphin, was also lodged here that he might be near the capital in case of events which might require his presence. A contemporary account mentions the fact that his valet de chambre was killed by lightning at Conflans while serving his royal master.

Conflans was the preferred suburban residence of the Princes and the Ducs de Bourgogne, and Philippe-le-Hardi there organized his tourneys and his passes d’armes with great eclat, on one occasion alone offering one hundred and fifteen thousand livres in prizes to the participants.

This castle, for it was more castle than palace, was reputed one of the most magnificent in the neighbourhood of the Paris of its time, surrounded as it was with a resplendent garden and a forest in miniature, really a part of the Bois de Vincennes of to-day, where roamed wild boar and wolves which furnished sport of a kingly kind.

The view from the terrace of the chateau must have been wonderfully fine, the towers and roof-tops of old Paris being silhouetted against the setting sun, its windows dominating the swift-flowing current of the two rivers at the foot of the fortress walls.

The greatest event of history enacted under the walls of Conflans was the battle and the treaty which followed after, between Louis XI and the Comte de Charolais, in 1405.

Commynes recounts the battle as follows: “Four thousand archers were sent out from Paris by the king, who fired upon the castle from the river bank on both sides.”

Bows and arrows were hardly effective weapons with which to shoot down castle walls, but stragglers who left themselves unprotected were from time to time picked off on both sides and much carnage actually ensued. Finally a treaty of peace was arranged, by which, at the death of Charles-le-Temeraire, according to usage, Louis XI absorbed the proprietary rights in the castle and made it a Maison Royale, bestowing it upon one of his favourites, Dame Gillette Hennequin.

The kings of France about this time developed a predilection for the chateaux on the banks of the Loire, and Conflans was offered for sale in 1554. Divers personages occupied it from that time on, the Marechal de Villeroy, the Connetable de Montmorency and, for a brief time, Cardinal Richelieu.

It was in the Chateau de Conflans that was planned the foundation of the French Academy; here Moliere and his players first presented “La Critique de l’Ecole des Femmes”; and here, also, was held the marriage of La Grande Mademoiselle with the unhappy Lauzan.

At the end of the reign of Louis XIV Fr. de Harlay-Chauvallon, Archbishop of Paris, bought the property of Richelieu, and, with the aid of Mansart and Le Notre, considerably embellished it within and without. Madame de Sevigne, in one of her many published letters, writes of the splendours which she saw at Conflans at this epoch.

Saint-Simon, the court chronicler, mentions that the gardens were so immaculately kept that when the Archbishop and “La Belle” Duchesse de Lesdiguieres used to promenade therein they were followed by a gardener who, with a rake, sought to remove the traces of each footprint as soon as made.

Later, the Cardinal de Beaumont, the persecutor of the Jansenists, resided here.

“Notre archevêque est a Conflans
C’est un grand solitaire
C’est un grand so
C’est un grand so
C’est un grand solitaire.”

The above verse is certainly banal enough, but the cardinal himself was a drôle, so perhaps it is appropriate. At any rate it is contemporary with the churchman’s sojourn at Conflans.