The Story of Rouen (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...are indeed older than this of Rouen, but the ruins of their donjon-keeps do not show anything like the character of the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, which is itself earlier in date than either Coucy (1228) or Pierrefonds (1390). More than this, a document of 1202 preserves the most interesting fact that this tower was planned after the 208 dimensions and shape of the famous Tour du Louvre, of which Paris now possesses only a circle of white marble to mark the site of the royal tower that once stood where the south-west corner of the Louvre courtyard is now. The walls of Rouen's donjon are 4 metres 20 thick, 46 metres in circumference at the base, and 30 metres high. These last two measurements show a difference of only two metres from those of the vanished Tour du Louvre. Before this chapter closes I shall be able to explain how it is that you are able to see in Rouen the most perfect presentment of a thirteenth-century donjon in France, with two-thirds of the present building in its original masonry. Within it took place most of the stirring events of history after a change in dynasty had left the castle of the Norman dukes to develop gradually into a commercial instead of a royal or military centre. One of these, the arrest of Charles le Mauvais, and the execution of his four friends by King Jean le Bon, I have spoken of in earlier chapters. This, too, was the fortress that held out longest for the King when the R