An Hour from Paris by Annabel Simms

Author:Annabel Simms
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843682028
Publisher: Network Books Distribution Ltd

As the Plantagenets were linked by marriage to the Montfort family, both the king of England and the king of France laid claim to Montfort in the 14th century and a lengthy war ensued, during which the castle and most of the ramparts were razed by the English. Two fragments of the castle walls (‘Les Tours’) are all that remain. Through an earlier connection by marriage with the rulers of Brittany, Montfort eventually passed to Anne de Bretagne (1477-1514), whose subsequent marriages to two French kings definitively established the town as part of the kingdom of France.

The ruined stone and brick tower on the hill-top was part of the Renaissance château built by Anne de Bretagne, who also began the enlargement of the 11th-century church. A second set of ramparts was built in the 16th century at the instigation of Charles XI, who promised the town a charter of independence in return. It became an important administrative centre for the region, which included the Forest of Montfort (it became Rambouillet under Napoleon I) and the little village of Versailles.

However, the expansion of Versailles under Louis XIV led to a decline in the importance of Montfort, which passed to the Duc de Luynes. During the Revolution the 11th-century chapel on the hill was requisitioned from the magistrate to whom it had been sold off, for use as a prison for the Chouans – participants in the counter-revolutionary uprising led by Jean Chouan in the Vendée from 1793 to 1800. They died there of starvation in conditions so atrocious that the owner had it demolished after the death of Robespierre in 1794, so that such scenes could never be repeated in Montfort. Under Napoleon the administration of the district was transferred to Rambouillet and Montfort suffered the further indignity of occupation after the French defeat at Waterloo in 1815. The occupation was presumably by the Prussians – the local history is understandably vague on this point.

In the 19th century the 16th-century ramparts were demolished, in the mistaken belief that the population would continue to expand. Montfort’s popularity with artists and writers dates from this period, Victor Hugo’s Romantic poem to its ruined castle setting the fashion, which has continued to the present day:

Je vous aime, ô débris! Et surtout quand l’automne

Prolonge en vos échos sa plainte monotone.

Sous vos abris coulants je voudrais habiter,

Vieilles tours, que le temps l’une vers l’autre incline,

Et qui semblez de loin sur la haute colline,

Deux noirs géants prêts à lutter.

(I love you, oh ruins! And most of all, when autumn

Prolongs in your echoes its monotonous lament.

I would like to live in your crumbling shelter,

Old towers, which time has inclined towards each other,

And which seem from afar on the high hill,

Two dark giants, ready to fight.)

Victor Hugo, Ode aux ruines, 1825 (my translation)

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