Château de Clisson: A Fortified Castle in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Brittany
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page19 sections
History
Château de Clisson is a former fortified castle in Clisson, France, built and developed by the lords and dukes of Brittany from the eleventh century onward. Standing on a granite promontory above the Sèvre Nantaise, it occupied a strategic position among the Breton, Angevin, and Poitevin marches, frontier territories where the Duchy of Brittany faced neighboring powers. The castle helped defend Brittany against the French strongholds of Tiffauges and Montaigu.
Early fortress and the lords of Clisson
The first lords of Clisson occupied the site from the beginning of the eleventh century and are first documented in 1040. Their châtellenie, a territorial lordship administered from a castle, encompassed 23 parishes. The earliest fortress may have been a castrum, meaning a fortified settlement or stronghold, established around 1058–1060, perhaps with wooden enclosures.
Until the early thirteenth century, the site appears to have been defended by a Romanesque fortress with a massive buttressed keep and an enclosing defensive circuit. Guillaume de Clisson, active as a lord around the beginning of the thirteenth century, established the foundations of the present castle on the granite spur to strengthen its defenses. The castle was probably demolished during the 1240s on the order of Duke John I of Brittany, in connection with a conflict involving Olivier II de Clisson, Guillaume’s grandson, and Olivier’s two half-brothers.
The Clisson family and Breton rule
During the fourteenth century, Olivier III de Clisson incorporated a fortified gatehouse complex, or châtelet, into the castle. The site later became associated with the troubled careers of Olivier IV and Olivier V de Clisson. Olivier IV was executed at the Paris market halls on 2 August 1343 by order of King Philip VI of France after being suspected of collusion with the English. His wife, Jeanne de Belleville, fled to England with their son Olivier V.
Olivier V later recovered his possessions through an alliance with the French and became Constable of France in 1380, although he spent little time at Clisson. After 1420, his daughter Marguerite de Clisson, countess of Penthièvre, was dispossessed for alleged treason against Duke John V of Brittany. The castle passed to the duke and became the apanage, or assigned territorial possession, of Richard of Étampes on 29 September 1420. Richard besieged the castle and town, which surrendered shortly before 5 October 1420.
Francis II and the artillery fortress
Château de Clisson subsequently became one of the favored residences of Duke Francis II of Brittany, the last independent duke of Brittany. He was born there in 1435 and remarried Marguerite de Foix at the castle in 1474. Works begun in 1464 and completed in 1488 under the direction of Guion le Heuc transformed the site into a major artillery fortress and expanded it westward.
By the fifteenth century, the castle had been integrated into Clisson’s wider intramural defense system. Its outer defenses formed the southern city wall. Beside the river stood the fortified seigneurial mill, separated from the castle by the Bondonneau gate. The city defenses continued across the Sèvre toward the Cuchaud tower and Saint-Jacques gate, then west to Connétable square and south to the castle prison tower. A route through the bastions led to the Cabareau, also called Cahareau, gate.
The Avaugour residence and the Wars of Religion
Until the seventeenth century, Château de Clisson was the residence of the Avaugour family, descendants of Francis I of Avaugour, the illegitimate son of Francis II of Brittany. The family altered parts of the castle to suit contemporary tastes. During the French Wars of Religion, a series of conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in sixteenth-century France, the fortress again became strategically important.
The Duke of Mercœur stationed troops at Clisson in 1587, and Charles of Avaugour prepared its defenses in 1588. Henry of Navarre, commanding the Huguenots of Montaigu, threatened to attack in September 1588 but abandoned the plan because he feared a prolonged siege. After Charles of Avaugour sided with Henry III and then remained loyal to Henry IV, the fortress became a base against the Duke of Mercœur. In 1596, funds taken from supporters of the Catholic League financed repairs to its fortifications.
Decline, destruction, and preservation
The châtelet collapsed during the middle of the seventeenth century. After Henri François d’Avaugour died without issue on 2 September 1746, the Avaugour possessions and titles passed to Charles of Rohan. Rohan ordered the sale of the castle’s furnishings from 18 November 1748 onward, causing the loss of historically valuable material, including many parchments. The owners then abandoned the fortress, although various families occupied its apartments until 1793.
During the War in the Vendée, a counter-revolutionary uprising in western France during the French Revolution, the Army of Mainz used the castle as its headquarters. After its defeat at Torfou, Republican troops under General Canclaux stopped in Clisson and burned the castle and town in 1793. On 8 February 1794, during the raids of the Infernal Columns, Republican military formations used to suppress the uprising, about thirty people sheltering in the ruins were killed by throat-cutting, shooting, or being thrown alive into a well.
After the Revolution, local inhabitants used the ruined castle as a quarry and removed stone to rebuild the town. The sculptor François-Frédéric Lemot bought it in 1807 to preserve the ruins. He incorporated them into the Italianate conception of his Garenne Lemot estate on the opposite bank of the Sèvre and published a historical and architectural notice on Clisson in 1812. His restoration was aesthetic rather than archaeological. He removed some seventeenth-century tuffeau buildings and repaired certain roofs. Proposed additions by the architect Mathurin Crucy, including an obelisk, a house with a large gallery, and a garden on the chestnut-tree bastion, were abandoned.
During the nineteenth century, the ruins attracted Romantic painters, sculptors, and writers, including Louis-François Cassas, Claude Thiénon, Gustave Flaubert, and Évariste Boulay-Paty. Jean Metzinger used the castle as the subject of a painting displayed at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes in 1905, while André Derain depicted it in a drawing.
The ruins were classified as a French historic monument on 13 August 1924. In 1962, the General Council of Loire-Atlantique acquired the castle from the Lemot family and undertook major restoration work with assistance from the French Ministry of Culture. Further campaigns took place in 1974–1975, 1986–1989, and 1991–1993. The lodgings in the western towers were restored by the Compagnons du Devoir. Additional protection granted on 30 August 2004 covered parts of the fortifications, the former castle ground, associated city defenses, the northern dry ditches, the masonry bridge, and the sloping defensive ground below the southern bastions.
Remains
Château de Clisson occupies the end of a rocky granite promontory projecting toward the valley of the Sèvre Nantaise. Its walls descend almost to river level. The complex combines an irregular, roughly circular early castle dominated by a square keep and a tall cylindrical tower, a western terrace, and a lower bastioned enclosure nearly 100 metres long. The early enclosing wall consisted of two irregular polygons flanked by cylindrical towers and separated from the rocky plateau by a shallow moat. A northern barbican, an advanced fortification protecting an entrance, was later added at the end of a curtain wall.
Early enclosure and residences
Châtelet and Saint-Louis tower
The grand châtelet was built during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries over the remains of an earlier entrance portal. Before its collapse in the seventeenth century, it was a granite building about 24 metres high, with a ground floor and five upper levels. A passage through the ground floor had a pointed barrel vault and was protected by two arrow slits, a murder hole, a portcullis, and two doors set six metres apart to control entry. The surviving southeastern gorge wall has six levels and includes a Louis XIV-style fireplace with a conical hood supported by consoles and small columns. The lowest level incorporates the foundations of an earlier two-tower gatehouse with arrow slits. Reuse of a Romanesque portal as a foundation accounts for the irregular shape of the western tower.
The thirteenth-century Saint-Louis tower adjoins the châtelet. Three stone bands gave it strong defensive qualities, while arrow slits in its walls were later supplemented by gun ports. Its name derives from the stay of King Louis IX, later canonized as Saint Louis, at the castle in 1230.
Seigneurial residence and kitchens
The seigneurial residence comprised a great hall, apartments, and kitchens, of which sections of wall survive. The ground floor appears to have been the great hall, while the upper floors contained apartments with large windows. The northeastern gable remains at full height and retains part of a fireplace whose hood rests on small fourteenth-century columns.
The kitchens were separated from the apartments by the northeastern gable. Their monumental fireplace has a hood divided into two sections and supported by arches resting on octagonal jambs. It was large enough to accommodate whole animals, including oxen. This part of the castle was restored in 1941 and again at the end of the twentieth century. Above the kitchens is the private chapel, oratory, or Sainte-Barbe chapel. It replaced an earlier chapel in the northern residence during the time of Francis II. A single arched tuffeau window, rebuilt in the seventeenth century, remains visible on the western face of the enclosing wall, while two granite holy-water basins survive inside.
Ancillary rooms and residences
Thick enclosing walls contained ancillary rooms, including a ground-floor latrine reached through a small opening and a first-floor chamber enlarged by a projecting bay less than one metre deep. The southern residence stood in the inner court of the early enclosure and survives only as ruins. It adjoined the Saint-Louis tower, followed the line of the wall, and formed a polygonal facade ending at the twin towers.
The northern residence occupied three sides of the polygonal enclosure and adjoined the châtelet. It originally had a basement, a ground floor, and two upper floors. Arrow slits opened through the outer basement wall, rectangular windows pierced the upper levels, and remains of a projecting sentry structure survive on its northernmost face.
Keep complex and eastern defenses
Principal and smaller keep towers
South of the early enclosure, the keep complex consists of a principal tower about 35 metres high and a smaller adjoining tower. Both have battered bases. The principal tower originally had five floors and served a residential purpose. The smaller tower probably contained storage rooms below and latrines and study rooms above. Both towers originally had conical roofs, but the fire of 1793 destroyed their floors and roofs.
Eastern towers
Two rectangular towers defend the eastern side. The first probably dates from the early fourteenth century and is attached to the outer face of the eastern residence beside the kitchens. Its oblique doorway provided access to the tower, which defended the previously untowered eastern wall and communicated with the mill outside. The second tower, attached to the northern side of the first, dates from the seventeenth century and has a ground floor and three upper floors. Its tuffeau elements include vaults, mouldings, and oculi, or small round or oval windows. Lemot repaired the roofs of both towers and several openings, including the doorway opening onto the northern esplanade, in 1809.
Western extension and artillery works
Entrances and western towers
The main entrance lies on the north side of the later western extension. It has Gothic features, crenellations, and machicolations, projecting openings from which defenders could attack people below. A drawbridge with projecting lifting arms once reached the entrance, and its former guide slots remain above the doorway. A square niche between them once held the arms of Brittany and later those of the Avaugour family.
The western extension contains two fifteenth-century round towers with walls averaging six metres thick, reflecting the adaptation of the defenses to improved artillery. The southwestern tower lacks machicolations and has a wall-walk protected by a sloping parapet. Five embrasures pierce it, four intended for cannon. Its Gothic lodging was converted into the Men’s Prison in the eighteenth century. The northwestern tower has crenellations and machicolations similar to those above the northern entrance, while its Gothic lodging became the Women’s Prison during the same century.
Western enclosure and southern gate
The western extension formed a new rectangular enclosure nearly 100 metres long. Its curtain wall was prolonged and completed with a barbican, two round artillery towers, protected artillery chambers, and a low outer rampart, or fausse-braie, that facilitated sorties by defenders. Southern bastions with rounded projections created three successive lines of defense.
The southern gate opens onto the southern moat and a terraced curtain wall. Its former drawbridge with lifting arms is indicated by two vertical slots in the facade. Between this gate and the southwestern tower, a granite semi-oval tower stands against the southern curtain wall. Built in the mid-sixteenth century to reinforce the southern defenses, it has small loopholes and artillery embrasures rather than crenellations and machicolations.
Northern barbicans and Ormes bastion
The castle has two northern barbicans. The first dates from the thirteenth century and originally consisted of two towers, one facing north and the other flanking the entrance, with a small stair building opposite. A square building added beside the stair during the fourteenth century strengthened the right flank of the entrance.
A second advanced work, built in 1456, strengthened the approach to the central castle. Known as the Ormes bastion, it was separated from the earlier barbican by the old castle moat. A stone arch and drawbridge connected it with the early barbican. The low, roofless work retains cannon embrasures and an upper wall-walk protected by a parapet pierced with loopholes. Its name refers to two elm trees that grew inside the enclosure. In 1480, Francis II ordered a new enclosing wall around this second barbican.
Northeastern bastion and associated defenses
The northeastern bastion is an esplanade built under Francis II. Lemot repaired breaches in the wall overlooking the Sèvre and added brick pillars, similar to those at Garenne Lemot, to support hanging vines. The esplanade probably also served as a nursery. A small polygonal raised artillery work, or cavalier, was built there at the end of the sixteenth century, increasing the elevation of cannon fire toward the opposite bank.
Other surviving fabric includes sections of the early enclosing wall, ruined residences, defensive towers, gates, barbicans, bastions, moats, and associated city-wall structures. Together these remains show the castle’s transformation from an early fortified stronghold into a layered medieval and early-modern defense system, while the destroyed floors and roofs of the keep towers preserve the material consequences of the 1793 fire.
