FAMOUS CASTLE
VINCENNES AND ITS STORY. ASSOCIATIONS WITH ENGLAND. Dickens told his readers that if Boulogne were only four hundred miles away instead of being so near our shores thousands of people would go to see it, but French men of letters are upbraiding Parisians for not going to see the Chateau of Vincennes, just outside the eastern gates of Paris. The late M. G. Lenotre, the historian, almost parodying the words of Dickens, said, “If the Chateau of Vincennes were only a hundred kilometres from Paris special excursion trains would be organised for visiting it.”
The castle that is too near the capital is one of the best preserved in France. It is of interest to English visitors because it was here that Henry V of England lived his French queen and here thathe died, on August 30, 1422. It has still another English interest, for its builder Jean le Bon was a prisoner in Windsor Castle, and there are reasons for believing that the Chateau of Vincennes was in many respects inspired by Windsor.
The castle is vast, completely surrounded by high walls and a moat. Within the walls there is a fine Gothic church. It is also one of the most famous castles on account pot only of its residents, King Louis XIV among them, but its prisoners. More than twelve hundred inscriptions of prisoners have been discovered traced on its walls. Every cell has its history. In one Mirabeau wrote. In other, Latude wfis imprisoned; in another, the Due de Beaufort. It was also the scene of the trial and last hours of the Due d’Enghien, who faced a firing squad in the dead of night in the moat.
The Chateau of Vincennes is lucky in its curator, M. Andre Hurtret—indeed the right man in the right place. M. Hurtret is a native of Vincennes, and as a boy he used to love to sketch the castle from all sides. He devoured every book he could find relating to the castle and its history, and when the question arose of a suitable curator for the historic building no one as qualified as he was could be found.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1939, Page 8
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361FAMOUS CASTLE Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1939, Page 8
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