The Château de Vincennes
In days of better health, I often walked from my garrett home here in the underwood to the Château de Vincennes situated at the entry of the former royal hunting preserve, about 40 leisurely minutes one way by foot. Schoolchildren here, if they retain little else of the Middle Ages, will remember being told of France’s Solomon figure, good King Louis IX (1214 – 1270) delivering justice seated beneath an oak tree here, as though drawing telluric force (so said Jacques LeGoff, the late dean of French medievalists) from the land he was born to rule. Let us be clear, however, that he was not so good for Jewish subjects in that he burned their Talmuds publicly. I don’t know how to forgive him for that (you could argue that it's not even my place to do so) but he did leave us the Sainte Chapelle, one of the most stunning buildings ever created and where I served as guide to pilgrims and tourists for ten glorious years. I have always considered him in some sense my boss.
Though favored by Saint Louis and other kings, the residence was a mere hunting lodge until Charles IV the Wise (1338 – 1380) (who married Jeanne whom he played with as a child) decided to build it into what we see today. As a teenager he had witnessed, during the takeover of Paris with the 100 year’s war, the slaughter of his father’s councillors in front of his eyes in the Palais de la Cité (these are the buildings surrounding the Sainte-Chapelle, so you know when you come and we can meet for a glass of wine, a cup of tea). Once come to the throne he decided needed an escape from the turbulent city whose defenses were clearly fragile.
And so he took the beloved hunting lodge of his forefathers and decided to make it into a proper royal residence. As such, situated just at the end of Metro Line 1, and so a mere 10-15 minute ride away from the center of the city, it is also, extraordinarily, the only medieval sovereign’s residence still standing in all of France. His intention was to fill it with noble residences and noble residences only, a sort of Cité Idéale of the aristocracy. Within its walls is another stunning Sainte-Chapelle there, modeled on the original in Paris intra muros.
The project never came to fruition and one is left with the sense of emptiness within the surrounding walls, filled now with 19th Century barracks where once were gardens. The real star of the show, however is the donjon, the keep, rising 52 majestic meters from the ground. It is indeed fit for a king.
This is the backdrop to Christine de Pizan's childhood, with her astrologer father appointed to Charles V. When she was widowed with children to care for she became the first woman to earn her bread by the strength of her pen and was patronized by Charles to do so. This is also, at least as far as I imagine it (since the château was under English domination with that king, who died in Vincennes' keep), that self-same setting for Shakespeare’s Henry V Act V :scene 2 “France: A royal palace” in which Henry says to Katharine that there is witchcraft in her lips.
There is a magnificent stairwell built into the entry tower of the second walls, those surrounding the keep and heralds the canny stagecraft of other royal settings using staircases as displays of power in the Loire, starting with Blois.
It should come as no surprise that other royal châteaux should take their cues from this the grandfather of them all. Before Versailles even, the young Louis XIV, in the aftermath of the Fronde, thought of Vincennes before he encountered Vaux le Vicomte and decided to outlandishly outdo everyone and everything with his palace north west of Paris.
The château was also used as an illustrious prison. In the 15th century it housed Pico della Mirandola before he was rescued by Lorenzo the Magnificent. In later days, when all but abandoned as a royal residence, Diderot was an inmate, as well as the infamous poisoner La Brinvilliers and lest we forget, the Marquis de Sade, who was arrested “for causing mayhem in a brothel.” Names left aside by history have carved their tales into the walls during their detention and for those who can make out the older French spellings combined with makeshift engraving, we can understand the despair and loneliness that is the prisoner’s lot across the ages, and the simple, eternal, human need to tell one’s story.
There is so much more to say about this place: here too, for instance, is where Mata Hari met her death by firing squad. The towers that were beheaded by Richelieu, the moat...more about Christine de Pizan, about Charles V, about his wife Jeanne. Still this is a long post as it is - perhaps another on the subject will be in order in good time. Meanwhile thank you for exploring my neighborhood with me in my head if not by stroll, and when you do come to Paris don't miss this gem.
(The top image is the château as pictured in its heyday by the Limbourg Brothers
in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry)
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