The banks of the Loire, from Blois to Angers, were the favorite resort of the last two branches of the royal race which occupied the throne before the house of Bourbon. That beautiful valley plain so well deserves the honor bestowed upon it by kings that we must here repeat what was said of it by one of our most eloquent writers:--"There is one province in France which is never sufficiently admired. Fragrant as Italy, flowery as the banks of the Guadalquivir, beautiful especially in its own characteristics, wholly French, having always been French,--unlike in that respect to our northern provinces, which have degenerated by contact with Germany, and to our southern provinces, which have lived in concubinage with Moors, Spaniards, and all other nationalities that adjoined them. This pure, chaste, brave, and loyal province is Touraine. Historic France is there! Auvergne is Auvergne, Languedoc is only Languedoc; but Touraine is France; the most national river for Frenchmen is the Loire, which waters Touraine.
For this reason we ought not to be surprised at the great number of historically noble buildings possessed by those departments which have taken the name, or derivations of the name, of the Loire. At every step we take in this land of enchantment we discover a new picture, bordered, it may be, by a river, or a tranquil lake reflecting in its liquid depths a castle with towers, and woods and sparkling waterfalls. It is quite natural that in a region chosen by Royalty for its sojourn, where the court was long established, great families and fortunes and distinguished men should have settled and built palaces as grand as themselves."But is it not incomprehensible that Royalty did not follow the advice indirectly given by Louis XI. to place the capital of the kingdom at Tours? There, without great expense, the Loire might have been made accessible for the merchant service, and also for vessels-of-war of light draught. There, too, the seat of government would have been safe from the dangers of invasion. Had this been done, the northern cities would not have required such vast sums of money spent to fortify them, --sums as vast as were those expended on the sumptuous glories of Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to Vauban, who wished to build his great palace at Mont Louis, between the Loire and the Cher, perhaps the revolution of 1789 might never have taken place.
These beautiful shores still bear the marks of royal tenderness. The chateaus of Chambord, Amboise, Blois, Chenonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-les-Tours, all those which the mistresses of kings, financiers, and nobles built at Veretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Usse, Villandri, Valencay, Chanteloup, Duretal, some of which have disappeared, though most of them still remain, are admirable relics which remind us of the marvels of a period that is little understood by the literary sect of the Middle-agists.
Among all these chateaus, that of Blois, where the court was then staying, is one on which the magnificence of the houses of Orleans and of Valois has placed its brilliant sign-manual,--making it the most interesting of all for historians, archaeologists, and Catholics. It was at the time of which we write completely isolated. The town, enclosed by massive walls supported by towers, lay below the fortress,--for the chateau served, in fact, as fort and pleasure-house. Above the town, with its blue-tiled, crowded roofs extending then, as now, from the river to the crest of the hill which commands the right bank, lies a triangular plateau, bounded to the west by a streamlet, which in these days is of no importance, for it flows beneath the town; but in the fifteenth century, so say historians, it formed quite a deep ravine, of which there still remains a sunken road, almost an abyss, between the suburbs of the town and the chateau.
It was on this plateau, with a double exposure to the north and south, that the counts of Blois built, in the architecture of the twelfth century, a castle where the famous Thibault de Tircheur, Thibault le Vieux, and others held a celebrated court. In those days of pure fuedality, in which the king was merely /primus inter pares/ (to use the fine expression of a king of Poland), the counts of Champagne, the counts of Blois, those of Anjou, the simple barons of Normandie, the dukes of Bretagne, lived with the splendor of sovereign princes and gave kings to the proudest kingdoms. The Plantagenets of Anjou, the Lusignans of Poitou, the Roberts of Normandie, maintained with a bold hand the royal races, and sometimes simple knights like du Glaicquin refused the purple, preferring the sword of a connetable.
When the Crown annexed the county of Blois to its domain, Louis XII., who had a liking for this residence (perhaps to escape Plessis of sinister memory), built at the back of the first building another building, facing east and west, which connected the chateau of the counts of Blois with the rest of the old structures, of which nothing now remains but the vast hall in which the States-general were held under Henri III.
