Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1918 — FAMED CHATEAU DESTROYED by GERMANS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FAMED CHATEAU DESTROYED by GERMANS

THE Castle of the Sires of Coucy razed to the ground, bombed by the fleeing enemy. This was the brief, bald communique which struck a blow to French hearts second only in force to that delivered by the shower of steel rained for two years and a half on the famous cathedral at Reims, writes Blanche McManus in the Chicago Herald. It was the spring before that summer cloudburst of war. We had opened that day for the first reading the “Ballades Francaises” of that eccentric and celebrated poet-of the “quartier” —legitimate successor of him who gave fame to the long-departed Case Procope —Paul Fort; opened it, too, at his adorable musical tribute dedicated to this same graqd old Chateau de Coucy. Built some 600 y&irs ago by a haughty seigneur by the iiame of Enguerrand, third of the line of Coucy, it was handed down for two centuries. Then a royal Louis of the reigning Orleans family, who evidently had a pretty taste in castles, having just built its splendid rival, the neighboring Chateau de Pierrefonds (also in the zone des armees but not yet liberated), bought it for 400,000 livres tournois, a unit of reckoning comparable to the franc of today.

After the usual martial vicissitudes of the times Cardinal Richelieu, in the seventeenth century, gave the fabric its first hard knock by ordering it dismantled as a fortress of the time. But its mighty walls resisted well, although the interior was gutted. Thereafter its debris served as a quarry for all the neighborhood, and It is easy to see that the solid houses of the little town huddling about the wa>ls were built chiefly of its stones. Some sixty years ago it entered into the public domain ot the French government, who commissioned the great French architect, Vio-lette-le-Duc, master of modern Gothic, to restore it to the extent of consolidating its stately shell against further disintegration; then, too, it came to be officially classed as a monument historique and remained the most splendid feudal bastile of all Europe and a joy and a marvel to the eyes of all who came within its spell. Everything Within Its Walls. So much for history. Now for its reality", at least up to a few months ago. The Chateau of Coucy is the most perfect example of the self-con-tained mode of existence on earth and should make the commuting suburbanite blush for his wandering life. Everything for the requirements of the dwellers within was held also within its mighty grip, surrounded by its four towering stories of defenses, taller in thjir ensemble than many a cathedral spire. First the encircling outer wall, behind w’hich in the old days lived the serfs in their wooden huts, but today inclosing the sleepy little village so typical of northern France. There w'as a rampart promenade, along ' which we followed, punctuated with the thirty-two tours of other days, and with but three gateways, one leading to Laon, one to SJoissons, one to Chauny,. all of them towns which are making rapid history atjhis moment. Here were gathered the .tiny shops, the markets whefe. provisions were brought from where they,were grown jn the fields below the walls. Next the second ring of walls, surrounded by a deep moat opening only at one massive gateway. We crossed its drawbridge, still hung by the rusty chains of other days. These inclosed the working parts of the chateau, an orchard and a quaint formal garden In which the family took their airings. Circled about were the stables, retainers’. quarters, guardhouses,; armory, poultry yard, dairy, the falcqqry, cel- > lars, storerooms, kitchens and all thp attendant paraphernalia necessary to the care and comfort of the thousands of henchmen that rallied about the standard of Coucy. In the center rose a chapel the original nucleus of the chateau. Foundations and a grass plot are all that remain. The fourth defense was the chateau proper, a great quadrangle as spacious as most chateaux in their ensemble. Each corner was crowned with a grea| cylindrical tower more than a hundred feet in height, their - walls nearly five yards thick. Then came the final defense, the

great donjon tower, the kernel of the impregnable nut which has never been cracked, nearly 200 feet in height, 100 feet in diameter and at the base 30 odd feet thick, the most nearly perfect example of the medieval architecture of defense. In 1914, a month after the opening of hostilities, the gray wave of the German army of invasion • had swept over Coucy. Its great towers command the greater part of the battlefield over which writhe three armies in their, titanic struggle. For this reason the enemy placed their antiaircraft guns and searchlights on the topmost tower. When in the middle of March they finally uprooted themselves for the first time since the beginning from their trenches and began their backward goosestep out of France, it was not likely that in the holocaust of destruction which they left in their way, which included children’s toys, family photographs and the doghouse, they would forget the Chateau of Coucy. As the horizon-blue lines of the French vagues of soldiery came within sight of the huge pile of their nation’s proudest medieval monument, so long hidden from their sight, thunderous explosions rent the fair sky of springtime above Coucy, and they saw with horror its great towers totter and fallthrough the veil of smoke. With an almost human groan there came to their ears the rending crash of the enormous fissure which broke through the stern heart of the great donjon. And so at last was cracked the kernel of the nut which had remained impregnable for 600 years.

Ruins of the Chateau de Coucy.