Château de Picquigny: A Historic Fortress in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page10 sections
History
Château de Picquigny in Picquigny, France, is a medieval fortress whose recorded history reaches back to 942 and whose buildings were later altered during the Renaissance. Built on the southern slope of the Somme valley, it guarded a river crossing and a toll point between Amiens and Abbeville, helping its lords control the movement of people and goods.
Early lordship and ecclesiastical offices
The allodial lordship of Picquigny was traditionally said to have been granted to one of Clovis’s companions. An allodial lordship, or franc-alleu, was land held outside ordinary feudal obligations. With its distinctive rights and privileges, Picquigny became one of the most important seigneuries in the kingdom of France. King Dagobert took the castle in 632, while more precise historical information begins with the assassination of Guillaume I of Normandy at Picquigny in 942. The killing was ordered by Arnoul I of Flanders and Louis IV of France.
Guermond was the first known lord of Picquigny, and his wife Adèle was recorded in 1013. The family left one of the oldest surviving archives of a northern French seigneurial house, now preserved in the French National Archives. In 1040, Eustache de Picquigny became the first vidame of Amiens and served as avoué of Corbie Abbey. A vidame represented and protected a bishop’s temporal interests, while an avoué was a lay protector and legal representative of a church institution. The latter office was associated with the right to mint coinage.
The lord of Picquigny rendered homage to the bishop of Amiens, who presented him with a gold ring, and to the abbot of Corbie. The title of vidame of Amiens was not hereditary in itself, but it was attached to ownership of the castle. In 1115, Adam, the castellan of Amiens, was imprisoned at Picquigny. In 1307, Renaud de Picquigny, acting on the orders of Philip IV of France, arrested and imprisoned the Templars of the Amiens bailliage there. A bailliage was a territorial judicial and administrative district of the French monarchy, while the Templars were a medieval military-religious order suppressed by Philip IV in the early fourteenth century.
War, destruction, and rebuilding
During the opening phase of the Hundred Years’ War, Edward III of England was unable to cross the Somme at Picquigny in 1346. The seigneury passed to Baudoin d’Ailly in 1398 and remained with the d’Ailly family until 1681. Charles the Bold burned the fortress in 1470, after which it was rebuilt and altered during the Renaissance. Charles VIII spent the night there on 7 June 1493 while returning from a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Boulogne.
Charles V’s army burned the town of Picquigny in 1553. Henri IV stayed at the castle in April 1597 before travelling to the siege of Amiens, which had been captured by the Spanish. Cardinal Richelieu spent a night at Picquigny in 1636 while travelling to inspect the fortifications of Abbeville. In the seventeenth century, the seigneury had 1,800 vassals, 700 fiefs, and 443 arrière-fiefs. A fief was land granted in return for service, while an arrière-fief was held from a tenant who owed allegiance to a superior lord. The barons’ motto was “I descend from the Most High and the god of war.”
Later ownership and decline
In 1681, Picquigny passed to the family of Honoré d’Albert, Duke of Chaulnes, and remained there until 1774. Madame de Sévigné stayed at the castle for four days in 1689 and described the visit in a letter dated 27 April. By the end of the seventeenth century, the castle had left the direct line of the Picquigny and d’Ailly families but remained in the Albert family through the ducal branch of Chaulnes. It was then rarely inhabited.
Poor maintenance during the second half of the eighteenth century left the castle dilapidated. Creditors seized it after the death of Michel Ferdinand d’Albert d’Ailly, fifth Duke of Chaulnes, in 1769, and it was no longer inhabited. Liefman Calmer acquired the property in 1774 and sold it in 1779 to the future King Charles X. After a further seizure, the Amiens district sold it as national property on 18 January 1795.
By 1818, the abandoned castle was in ruins. From 1795 onward, local inhabitants used it as a stone quarry, and the property passed through several owners. Baron de Morgan de Belloy owned the ruins in the mid-nineteenth century. During that century, the roofs were demolished, their timber was reused at the Rouval factory near Doullens, and the remaining buildings deteriorated through exposure to the weather. Artists and historians, including the Duthoit brothers, later recorded and rediscovered the ruins through drawings and engravings.
Protection and preservation
The ruins were listed as a historic monument in France in 1906. In 1912, the daughter of Baron de Morgan de Belloy, the Countess Aymar de La Rochefoucauld, bequeathed them to the Société des antiquaires de Picardie. After her death in 1920, the society, a learned organization based in Amiens, stabilized and preserved the ruins for almost a century and was recorded as their initial owner in 1921.
In 2013, the Société des antiquaires de Picardie sold the ruins to Baron Michel Morange, who undertook their preservation and restoration. The property has been privately owned since that year. Earlier work included restoration of the inner northern rampart between the Porte du Gard and the collegiate church around 2005, the clearing and layout of a medieval garden before the Sévigné pavilion in 2009, and vegetation-clearing on the walls in 2013 and 2014.
Remains
The fortress occupies a large trapezoidal enclosure extending 55 metres along the left bank of the Somme. It is built against the hillside, with a ditch separating it from the plateau to the south and the town stretching below toward the river. Ramparts, gates, churches, residential remains, courtyards, and defensive works survive within this enclosure in varying states of preservation.
Residential block
The main residential block was aligned north to south. It had a ground floor, two upper floors, and a high roof space covered with slate. Its southern exterior façade retains a strongly medieval character, with a wall several metres thick, few windows divided by stone mullions, and projecting towers overlooking the deep defensive ditch.
The northern interior façade, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has almost entirely disappeared. Together with the lower north-eastern wing, it contained eight bays with tall mullioned windows divided by pilasters. One bay carried a high lantern, a raised roof structure that admitted light and marked the position of a spiral staircase serving the different levels. A second staircase stood in the north-eastern wing, where the descent to the cellar survives.
The building’s basement retains substantial remains, including a former kitchen. Two levels rose above it, each containing three large rooms and several smaller rooms. The northern façade opened onto a terraced courtyard enclosed by walls that still survive.
Ramparts and gates
Circular projecting corner towers flanked the southern side of the residential block. On the western side, bastioned walls supported the castle courtyard and enclosed the Porte du Gard within a recessed section of the rampart. A bastion is a projecting defensive work designed to strengthen a fortification and support defensive fire.
The Porte du Gard opens on the western side of the castle and led only to the lower ramparts and the collegiate church. Its pointed-arch doorway, characteristic of Gothic architecture, is flanked by two small towers. The entrance formerly had a portcullis, a vertically sliding gate, and two coats of arms decorate the top of the arch.
The Porte de la Barbacane provided southern access to the upper part, or core, of the fortress. A barbacane is a fortified outer defensive work or gate structure. Each of its two openings formerly had a drawbridge. The wider, pointed-arch opening served carriages, while the narrower, rounded-arch opening served pedestrians. This was the only gate through which traffic between Amiens and Abbeville passed at Picquigny, enabling the lord’s men-at-arms to control movement and collect tolls.
Churches and pavilion
The castle included a castral church and a collegiate church. After the first was destroyed, the collegiate church became the parish church and was then situated in the cemetery. The collegiate church also preserves coloured arms of Picquigny on a plaque commemorating victims of the wars. The same arms appear without colour on the slab of the vault of the Picquigny vidames.
The seventeenth-century Sévigné pavilion stands behind the Porte du Gard. Although its exterior resembles a residence, its interior is occupied by a large staircase extending across the building and connecting the upper and lower parts of the castle. The pavilion’s eastern façade and its heraldic decoration survive among the site’s preserved elements.
Heraldic remains
Sculpted heraldic arms appear on both gates and on the Sévigné pavilion. The arms associated with Charles d’Ailly, who died in 1567, combine those of the d’Ailly, Melun, Crèvecœur, Hornes, and Picquigny families. The Porte du Gard bears the arms of Antoine d’Ailly and Marguerite de Melun. Arms of Picquigny also appear in relief on the Porte de la Barbacane and on the Sévigné pavilion.
