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Sinclair,
What does
"falasise" mean it the quote that you sent?
Laurel
You are correct my hurried translation was in
error. "Au somme d'une falasise abrupte se dressent les
ruines de Chateau-Galliard, forteresse edifiee par Richard Coeur de Lion au
retour de croisade (1196-1197)."
Guide de La Route Selection de Reader's Digest S.A Paris
1997
Sinclair
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 11, 1999 3:40 AM
Subject: Hold the Fort! --Andelys
>
> I have been reading the
description of Richard the Lionhearted's
> imprisonment in the book
"Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings" by Amy
>
Kelly. This gives almost a day by day discription of the events and at
no
> time was Richard in French territory. Richard was moved
from Trifels to
> Hagenau. Then Emperor Henry Hohenstaufen sent
for him to be brought to
> Worms. There followed a long
negotiations that involved many countries, the
> Pope and even
Eleanor, Richard's mother came. "All wept. Henry of
>
Hohenstaufen condescdnded grandly; the captive's fetters were unloosed;
the
> ransom was conveyed; the hostages were given over, among them
the Archbishop
> of Rouen, who had been the queen's stay in so many
crises, her protector on
> so many journeyings; and the queen herself,
worn with labor and anguish,
> fell weeping into the arms of
Coeur-de-Lion. She wa, as she had sritten to
> Pope Celestine,
"worn to a skeleton, a mere thing of skin and bones, the sap
>
consumed in her veins, tears all but dried in the fountains of her
eyes.'
> All the bystanders let their tears flow at the spectacle of
this aged woman,
> the most astute and venerable soverign in Europe,
still at seventy-two a
> figure of significance in the counsels of
men, raining her tears on the
> bosom of her glorious son. There
may have been in that concourse some
> patriarcal bishops who
remembered her as the young Queen of France getting
> herself and her
baggage wains over the Rhine in this very city of Minz a
>
half-century before on her way to the Holy Land, for she too had been
signed
> with the cross; for the hyounger generation the mere sight of
her would
> evoke the airs of troubgadours' and minnesingers' sons
that had kept her
> name alive in all the intervening time with malice
or with praise."
> "the queen and her son
accepted the invitation of the Bishop of Cologne
> to spend the end of
the week in the capital of his diocese on their way down
> the Rhine
to the sea. In Cologne the prelate did hs best with suptuous
>
banquets and valley wines.....From Cologne.....it is related that
after
> Richard had passed out of Swabia, Henry Hohenstaufen,
stimulated anew by
> pressures from Philip of France, repented him of
having so lightly delivered
> his captive and sent followers to pursue
and overtake him; and that Philip
> cooperated in this plan by placing
ships in the Channel to intercept the
> royal party. However
this may have been, the king and queen avoided all
> these traps and
came at last to Antwerp.....Richard's admiral, Stephen of
> Turnham,
received the travelers on the famous ship Trenchemer.....they made
>
their way among the islands by day.....and by night for greater comfort
and
> security lay upon a great galley that came out from Rye.
On March 12 ...the
> ships bore into the harbor of Sandwich.
>
> So he was never in France at that time. But then in 1196 he
returns to
> build a fortress upon a peerless height that should
surpass anything yet
> seen in Europe. A very mountain of
defiance to obstruct the valley of the
> Seine by river and by
road. 2/3 of the distance, as the crow flies from
> Paris to the
sea, the river described a deep loop, washing the chalky cliffs
> of
an abrupt eminence that offered a panoramic survey of the whole region
to
> its remote horizons. This height, the "Rock of
Andelys," had not escaped
> the appraising eye of Philip, but it
loomed a few leagues beyond his reach.
> The
Angevin genius for building stirred mightly in Coeur-de-Lion as he
>
reconnoitered this matchless site. >From the days of his earliest
memory he
> had prowled about the massy ancient piles reared by
Foulques the Black,
> William the Conqueror, Henry Beauclerc, Geoffrey
the Fair and Henry
> Fitz-Empress (Richard's father) on the heights of
Loches, Falaise, Chinon,
> and many another dominating lookout.
In the Latin Kingdom he had explored
> with Amazement and delight the
newest military construction of the TEMPLARS
> and hospitallers at
least in Margab and Acre, Ramleh and Ascalon.
>
(info on the construction) "Behold," exclaimed the architect
king to
> his amazed liege men at the end of 1196. "how fair my
daughter has grown in
> a single year." With raillery he
named the pile "Chateau Gaillard. Saucy
> Castle, or
Petulant Castle, it has been called, though the English hardly
>
renders the mocking challenge of the French.
>
> ======
>
The town of Gisors is nearby and this is said about it.
"Gisors, where
> once the vast elm had marked the place of parley
between Capetian kings and
> the Norman dukes"
>
>
Laurel
>
>
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