Navigation Signal Processing for GNSS Software Receivers 1st Edition Thomas Pany
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- 5. Navigation Signal Processing for GNSS Software Receivers 1st Edition Thomas Pany Digital Instant Download Author(s): Thomas Pany ISBN(s): 9781608070275, 1608070271 Edition: 1 File Details: PDF, 8.36 MB Year: 2010 Language: english
- 8. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the U.S. Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-60807-027-5 Cover design by Greg Lamb Accompanying MATLAB and assembler programs are available at www.artechhouse.com. © 2010 ARTECH HOUSE 685 Canton Street Norwood, MA 02062 All rights reserved. Printed and bound in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includ ing photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Artech House cannot attest to the accuracy of this informa tion. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trade mark or service mark. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
- 9. Contents Preface xiii Acknowledgments xvii Chapter 1 Radio Navigation Signals 1 1.1 Signal Generation 1 1.2 Signal Propagation 2 1.3 Signal Conditioning 3 1.4 Motivation for a Generic Signal Model 4 1.5 Sampling 5 1.6 Deterministic Received Signal Model 6 1.7 Stochastic Noise Model 6 1.8 Short-Period Signal Model 7 1.8.1 Zeroth-Order Moment of Signal Power 8 1.8.2 First-Order Moment of Signal Power 8 1.8.3 Second-Order Moment of Signal Power 9 1.8.4 First-Order Moment of Signal Power Variations 9 1.8.5 Separation of Code and Carrier Correlation 10 1.9 Exemplary Signals 11 1.9.1 A Model for the GPS C/A-Code Signal 11 1.9.2 A Model for the Galileo E1 Open-Service Signal 13 1.9.3 Pulsed GNSS Signals 14 1.9.4 Gaussian Double Pulse 15 References 16 Chapter 2 Software-Defined Radio 17 2.1 Definitions 17 2.2 Communication Radios 19 2.2.1 GNU Radio 19 2.2.2 Joint Tactical Radio System 19 2.3 GNSS Software Receivers 22 2.3.1 Front Ends 22 2.3.2 Illustrative Applications 25 2.3.3 High-End GNSS Software Receivers 28 2.4 Technology Evaluation and Discussion 30 References 30
- 11. Contents vii 4.3.1 Model for One or More Propagation Paths 73 4.3.2 Single Propagation Path 76 4.3.3 Correlation Point 91 4.3.4 Linearization 97 4.3.5 Multiple Propagation Paths 98 4.3.6 Two Propagation Paths: Code-Phase CRLB 100 4.3.7 Two Propagation Paths: Doppler CRLB 104 4.3.8 Two Propagation Paths: Remark on Other Bounds 104 4.4 Data Reduction 106 4.4.1 Sufficient Statistics 106 4.4.2 Multicorrelator Approach 107 4.4.3 First-Derivative Approach 107 4.4.4 Colored Noise 108 4.5 Bayesian Approach 108 4.5.1 Minimum Mean-Squared Error Estimation 109 4.5.2 Kalman–Bucy Filter 110 4.5.3 Other Filters 112 4.5.4 Use of Kalman Filters in GNSS Signal Processing 113 4.6 Squaring Loss Revisited 114 4.7 Numerical Simulation 117 4.7.1 Evaluation of Bounds 118 4.7.2 Cost Function 119 4.7.3 LSQ Solution 120 4.8 Discussion 124 References 125 Chapter 5 Signal Detection 129 5.1 Detection Principles 129 5.1.1 Simple Hypothesis Testing 130 5.1.2 Composite Hypothesis Testing 131 5.2 Detection Domains 133 5.2.1 Pseudorange Domain Detection 133 5.2.2 Position Domain Detection 133 5.3 Preprocessing 133 5.4 Clairvoyant Detector for Uniformly Distributed Phase 134 5.5 Energy Detector 137 5.6 Bayesian Detector 138 5.7 Generalized Likelihood-Ratio Detector 140 5.7.1 Single Coherent Integration 141 5.7.2 Multiple Coherent Integrations 142 5.7.3 Considering Navigation Signal Interference 147 5.7.4 Data and Pilot 149 5.8 System-Detection Performance 154 5.8.1 Idealized Assumptions 155 5.8.2 Mean Acquisition Time 155
- 12. 5.8.3 System Probabilities 156 5.8.4 Independent Bin Approximation 156 5.8.5 Code-Phase and Doppler Losses 157 5.9 Long Integration Times and Differential Detectors 158 5.10 Discussion 159 References 161 Chapter 6 Sample Preprocessing 163 6.1 ADC Quantization 163 6.1.1 Quantization Rule 163 6.1.2 Matched Filter 165 6.1.3 Evaluation of Expected Values 167 6.1.4 Infinite Number of Bits 169 6.1.5 Numerical Evaluation 170 6.2 Noise-Floor Determination 174 6.3 ADC Requirements for Pulse Blanking 174 6.3.1 Front-End Gain and Recovery Time 175 6.3.2 Pulse Blanking 175 6.3.3 ADC Resolution 176 6.4 Handling Colored Noise 178 6.4.1 Spectral Whitening 178 6.4.2 Modified Reference Signals 179 6.4.3 Overcompensation of the Incoming Signal 180 6.4.4 Implementation Issues 180 6.5 Sub-Nyquist Sampling 180 References 182 Chapter 7 Correlators 185 7.1 Correlator and Waveform-Based Tracking 185 7.2 Generic Correlator 187 7.2.1 Expected Value 188 7.2.2 Covariance 189 7.2.3 Variance 191 7.3 Correlator Types with Illustration 191 7.3.1 P-Correlator 192 7.3.2 F-Correlator 193 7.3.3 D-Correlator 194 7.3.4 W-Correlator 194 7.4 Difference Correlators 197 7.4.1 Single-Difference P-Correlators 197 7.4.2 Double-Difference P-Correlators 199 7.5 Noisy Reference Signal for Codeless Tracking 200 7.5.1 Expected Value 202 7.5.2 Covariance 202 viii Contents
- 13. Contents ix 7.5.3 Variance 204 7.5.4 L2 P(Y)-Code Carrier-Phase Discriminator Noise 204 7.6 Incorporating Colored Noise 206 7.6.1 White-Noise Transformation 206 7.6.2 Early–Late Code Discriminator with Infinite Sample Rate 208 7.7 Comparison of Finite and Infinite Sample Rates 212 References 214 Chapter 8 Discriminators 217 8.1 Noncoherent Discriminators 217 8.1.1 Code Discriminator 217 8.1.2 Doppler Discriminator 221 8.1.3 Phase Discriminator 223 8.1.4 Clipping 225 8.2 S-Curve Shaping 225 8.2.1 Code-Discriminator Performance Characteristics 226 8.2.2 Optimum S-Curve 227 8.2.3 Frequency-Domain S-Curve Shaping 228 8.2.4 Discussion 231 8.3 Multipath Estimating Techniques 231 8.3.1 The LSQ Equations 232 8.3.2 Calibration 235 8.3.3 General Procedure 235 8.3.4 Correlator Placement 236 8.3.5 Initial Values 236 8.3.6 Number of Required Iterations 237 8.3.7 Multipath Detection 237 8.3.8 Discussion 238 8.4 From Discriminator Noise to Position Accuracy 238 References 239 Chapter 9 Receiver Core Operations 241 9.1 Test-System Configuration 241 9.2 Signal-Sample Bit Conversion 242 9.2.1 Algorithm 243 9.2.2 Numerical Performance 244 9.2.3 Discussion and Other Algorithms 245 9.3 Resampling 245 9.3.1 Algorithm 245 9.3.2 Numerical Performance 245 9.3.3 NCO Resolution 246 9.3.4 Discussion and Other Algorithms 248 9.4 Correlators 248 9.4.1 SDR Implementation 249
- 14. 9.4.2 Discussion and Other Algorithms 250 9.5 Fast Fourier Transform 251 9.5.1 Algorithm 251 9.5.2 Convolution Theorem 252 9.5.3 Time-Domain Correlation and Data Preparation 253 9.5.4 Spectral Shifting 256 9.5.5 Limited-Size Inverse FFT 257 9.5.6 Circular Correlation with Doppler Preprocessing 260 9.5.7 Handling Secondary Codes 263 9.5.8 Asymptotic Computational Performance 267 9.5.9 Reported FFT Performance Values 267 9.5.10 Discussion and Number of Correlators 269 9.6 Reality Check for Signal Tracking 271 9.7 Power Consumption 272 9.8 Discussion 274 References 275 Chapter 10 GNSS SDR RTK System Concept 277 10.1 Technology Enablers 277 10.1.1 Ultra-Mobile PCs 277 10.1.2 Cost-Effective High-Rate Data Links 278 10.2 System Overview 279 10.2.1 Setup 279 10.2.2 Sample Applications 280 10.2.3 Test Installation and Used Signals 280 10.3 Key Algorithms and Components 281 10.4 High-Sensitivity Acquisition Engine 281 10.4.1 Doppler Search Space 282 10.4.2 Correlation Method 284 10.4.3 Clock Stability 284 10.4.4 Line-of-Sight Dynamics 287 10.4.5 Flow Diagram and FFT Algorithms 287 10.4.6 Acquisition Time 288 10.5 Assisted Tracking 289 10.5.1 Vector-Hold Tracking 290 10.5.2 Double-Difference Correlator 291 10.6 Low-Cost Pseudolites 297 10.6.1 Continuous-Time Signals 299 10.6.2 Pulsed Signals 299 10.7 RTK Engine 304 References 305 Chapter 11 Exemplary Source Code 307 11.1 Intended Use 307 Contents
- 15. Contents xi 11.2 Setup 307 11.2.1 Required Software 307 11.2.2 Preparing the Simulation 308 11.2.3 Signal Selection and Simulation Parameters 308 11.3 Routines 308 11.3.1 True Cramér-Rao Lower Bound 308 11.3.2 Discriminator Noise Analysis 308 11.3.3 FFT Acquisition 308 11.3.4 Simplified Vector Tracking with Multipath Mitigation and Spectral Whitening 309 Appendix A.1 Complex Least-Squares Adjustment 311 A.1.1 Definitions 311 A.1.2 Probability Density Function 312 A.1.3 The Adjustment 312 A.1.4 Real- and Complex-Valued Estimated Parameters 314 A.1.5 A Posteriori Variance of Unit Weight 315 A.1.6 Example 318 A.1.7 Discussion 320 A.2 Representing Digital GNSS Signals 320 A.2.1 Complex-Valued Input Signal 320 A.2.2 Real-Valued Input Signal 321 A.2.3 Comparing Real- and Complex-Valued Signals 322 A.3 Correlation Function Invariance 326 A.4 Useful Formulas 329 A.4.1 Fourier Transform 329 A.4.2 Correlation Function 331 A.4.3 Correlation with an Auxiliary Function 332 A.4.4 Correlation with Doppler 333 A.4.5 Correlation in Continuous Time 334 A.4.6 Probability Density Functions 336 References 338 Abbreviations 339 List of Symbols 343 About the Author 345 Index 347
- 16. xiii Preface The continuous developments of software-defined radio technology resulted in the appearance of the first real-time GPS software radios at the beginning of this cen- tury. For the first time, it was possible to realize a complete GNSS receiver without going into the depths of cumbersome hardware development that requires develop- ment or programming of low-level digital circuitry. The hardware development ef- forts were indeed so high that only a very limited number of companies or research institutes could afford them. Furthermore, the implementation constraints were so severe, especially for the first generation of GPS receivers, that often crude signal- processing approximations were necessary to allow a real implementation. Cur- rently, software-defined radio technology not only allows receiver implementations by a larger research community, but also drastically increases the signal-processing capabilities. It also has the potential to become, in certain navigation areas, a com- mercial success. Software radio technology provides an opportunity to design a new class of GNSS receivers, being more flexible and easier to develop than their FPGA- or ASIC-based counterparts. Therefore, this text reviews navigation signal detection and estimation algorithms and their implementation in a software radio. A focus is put on high-precision applications for GNSS signals and an innovative RTK re- ceiver concept based on difference correlators is proposed. This text makes extensive use of the least-squares principle. The least-squares principle is the typical basis for the calculation of a navigation solution. An adjust- ment or a Kalman filter calculates positions from pseudorange observations in vir- tually any GNSS receiver. Within this text, the least-squares principle is consistently extended to also allow signal samples as observations. In contrast to the pseudorange- observation equation, the signal sample model is highly non-linear, causing a num- ber of difficulties that are discussed. Furthermore, signal sample observations can be complex-valued. In the author’s opinion, the development of a navigation receiver does not nec- essarily require an in-depth theoretical knowledge of signal-estimation and signal- detection theory. The basic algorithms like correlation and tracking can also be understood on an intuitive basis. Indeed many textbooks skip the highly theoretical signal-estimation and signal-detection framework and focus on engineering aspects. The question arises: What can we learn from the theoretical treatment that is pre- sented here? First, the theory allows a performance assessment without building a receiver. By providing benchmarks like the Cramér-Rao lower bound or the clair- voyant detector, the theory serves also as a reference with which to compare a real implementation. This text attempts to generalize the existing theory for arbitrary navigation signal waveforms, going beyond existing GNSS signals. The theoretical
- 17. treatment also gives hints for optimal algorithms; useful examples that are discussed are spectral whitening and the least-squares-based multipath-estimating discrimina- tor. Efficient algorithms are found in the frequency domain for signal acquisition, which itself would justify the effort of going into theoretical details. Furthermore, the theoretical analysis points out that new developments could be expected in the field of direct-position estimation (in a single-step procedure, instead of estimating a position via pseudoranges), which should give advantages in terms of interference robustness and sensitivity. Sensitivity might be further increased by using Bayesian techniques (like a particle filter) that do not rely on a linearized signal model. Unfortunately, the existing navigation signal-processing theory has limits and does not always provide an optimal algorithm for detection or estimation. Ex amples are the nonexistence of a uniform most powerful detector for acquisition and the nonexistence of a minimum variance unbiased code-phase or Doppler estimator for finitely received signal power. In addition, the practical usability of Bayesian techniques within signal processing (apart from the Kalman filter) is not completely assessed. Overall, it seems that a theoretically optimal navigation receiver is out-of- reach today, even if only signal processing is considered. However, software radio technology closes the gap between existing theory and real implementation. Overview Within this text, the navigation signal processing theory is described for generic navi- gation signals to allow a broad range of applications, beyond that of GNSS. Require- ments for navigation signals are introduced in Chapter 1 and are illustrated with one GPS, one Galileo, and two pulsed signals. Software-defined radio technology will be introduced in Chapter 2, together with the architecture and the data flow of a per- manent GNSS reference station in Chapter 3. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on theoretical signal-processing aspects and Chapters 6 through 9 shift the focus to implementation. An innovative high-precision software radio concept is presented in Chapter 10 using double-difference correlators, in addition to double-difference pseudorange and carrier- phase observations to increase carrier-phase tracking stability for real-time kinematic applications. Finally, on the Artech House Web site, www.artechhouse.com, this book has some MATLAB and assembler programs that illustrate the core signal-processing concepts of a navigation receiver. Chapter 11 describes this software. Summary of Presented Signal-Processing Theory In Chapter 1, requirements are formulated that a generic navigation signal has to fulfill to allow for the simultaneous estimation of the code phase, the Doppler and the carrier phase. Based on those requirements, Chapter 4 reviews the estimation theory for navigation signals using a consistent mathematical notation and derives the theory from first principles. The presented mathematical derivations are very detailed and with the finite sample rate approach, a reader should be able to adapt the theory for his or her purposes easily. The finite sample rate description is also chosen to enable a software receiver developer to establish a one-to-one correspon- dence of theory and implementation at every stage of signal processing. xiv Preface
- 19. com/static/reslib/pany/pany1.html. The source code includes the FFT acquisition methods and multipath-estimating tracking. Furthermore, MATLAB scripts for the true Cramér-Rao lower bound as well as for the thermal-noise analysis of the noncoherent discriminators are included. The scripts run with the four exemplary navigation signals of Chapter 1 and are outlined in Chapter 11. Book’s Usage for Practical Receiver Implementation This book should help in building advanced navigation software receivers. It is not a beginner’s book and the reader should be familiar with the architecture of a GNSS software receiver, which is, for example, excellently described by Borre’s book mentioned in Chapter 2. Borre’s book also comes with a complete MATLABreceiverandourtextmayhelpyoutoextendthisreceiverforhigh-sensitivity applications using efficient FFT techniques or for high-precision applications ap- plying multipath-mitigation schemes or stable double-difference carrier-phase tracking. To build a navigation software receiver, you need there things: navigation sig- nal samples, a software framework that handles the data flow, and efficient core algorithms. Signal samples can be obtained by one of the GNSS front ends described in Chapter 2 or you can use the single-channel signal generator of Chapter 11. Some- times, the front-end manufacturers can provide you with exemplary signal-sample streams, too. Writing a software receiver framework from scratch can be a quite tedious work. The framework handles the enormous amount of signal samples, synchro- nizes the different receiver channels, computes the position, and provides some standard output formats. You can short-cut this by adapting the MATLAB source code mentioned above. Another possibility to avoid this cumbersome work is to use a commercial software receiver having an application programming interface, which you can plug into your own source code. Chapter 11 provides you with a single-channel framework that demonstrates how to convert the sample stream into pseudorange measurements. Finally, the core algorithms can actually be found within this text. They are derived in a way that they can be adapted easily for a specific framework and the assembler code should help to realize them efficiently. xvi Preface
- 20. xvii Acknowledgments This work would not have been possible without the support from numerous co- workers and colleagues. I am especially grateful to the researchers of the University of Federal Armed Forces in Munich, to the researchers at the IFEN GmbH, and to many colleagues from research institutes from all over the world. I am grateful to Professor Günter W. Hein for continually encouraging me to enter this field, for his uninterrupted belief in technology, and for showing me ways of going beyond limits. Professor Bernd Eissfeller established the basis for GNSS receiver technology research at the Institute of Geodesy and Navigation. His con- tribution to this work cannot be overvalued. I would also like to thank Professor Jörn Thielecke for fruitful discussions. With his knowledge on communication and navigation signal processing, he showed me several important links between both fields.
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- 22. Jourdain de Lisle, the chief of a great band of robbers, bought the protection of the provost, and the Châtelet refused to take cognizance of his eight crimes—any one of which deserved an ignominious death. It was necessary to appoint a new provost before justice could be meted out to Jourdain de Lisle, who was at last tied to the tail of a horse and dragged through the streets of Paris to the public gallows. In the constant warfare between the provost and the people the latter did not hesitate to attack the prison fortress of the Châtelet. In 1320 a body of insurgents collected under the leadership of two apostate priests who promised to meet them across the seas and conquer the Holy Land. When some of their number were arrested and thrown into the Châtelet, the rest marched upon the prison, bent on rescue, and, breaking in, effected a general gaol delivery. This was not the only occasion in which the Châtelet lost those committed to its safe-keeping. In the latter end of the sixteenth century the provost was one Hugues de Bourgueil, a hunch-back with a beautiful wife. Among his prisoners was a young Italian, named Gonsalvi, who, on the strength of his nationality, gained the goodwill of Catherine de Medicis, the Queen Mother. The Queen commended him to the provost, who lodged him in his own house, and Gonsalvi repaid this kindness by running away with de Bourgueil’s wife. Madame de Bourgueil, on the eve of her elopement, gained possession of the prison keys and released the whole of the three hundred prisoners in custody, thus diverting the attention from her own escapade. The provost, preferring his duty to his wife, turned out with horse and foot, and pursued and recaptured the fugitive prisoners, while Madame de Bourgueil and her lover were allowed to go their own way. After this affair the King moved the provost’s residence from the Châtelet to the Hôtel de Hercule. References are found in the earlier records of the various prisoners confined in the Châtelet. One of the earliest is a list of Jews imprisoned for reasons not given. But protection was also afforded
- 23. to this much wronged race, and once, towards the end of the fourteenth century, when the populace rose to rob and slaughter the Jews, asylum was given to the unfortunates by opening to them the gates of the Châtelet. About the same time a Spanish Jew and an habitual thief, one Salmon of Barcelona, were taken to the Châtelet and condemned to be hanged by the heels between two large dogs. Salmon, to save himself, offered to turn Christian, and was duly baptised, the gaoler’s wife being his godmother. Nevertheless, within a week he was hanged “like a Christian” (chrétiennement), under his baptismal name of Nicholas. The Jews themselves resented the apostasy of a co-religionist and it is recorded that four were detained in the Châtelet for having attacked and maltreated Salmon for espousing Christianity. For this they were condemned to be flogged at all the street corners on four successive Sundays; but when a part of the punishment had been inflicted they were allowed to buy off the rest by a payment of 18,000 francs in gold. The money was applied to the rebuilding of the Petit Pont. Prisoners of war were confined there. Eleven gentlemen accused of assassination were “long detained” in the Châtelet and in the end executed. It continually received sorcerers and magicians in the days when many were accused of commerce with the Devil. Idle vagabonds who would not work were lodged in it. At this period Paris and the provinces were terrorised by bands of brigands. Some of the chief leaders were captured and carried to the Châtelet, where they suffered the extreme penalty. The crime of poisoning, always so much in evidence in French criminal annals, was early recorded at the Châtelet. In 1390 payment was authorised for three mounted sergeants of police who escorted from the prison at Angers and Le Mans to the Châtelet, two priests charged with having thrown poison into the wells, fountains and rivers of the neighborhood. One Honoré Paulard, a bourgeois of Paris, was in 1402 thrown into the Fin d’Aise dungeon of the Châtelet for having poisoned his father, mother, two sisters and three other persons in
- 24. order to succeed to their inheritance. Out of consideration for his family connections he was not publicly executed but left to the tender mercies of the Fin d’Aise, where he died at the end of a month. The procureur of parliament was condemned to death with his wife Ysabelete, a prisoner in the Châtelet, whose former husband, also a procureur, they were suspected of having poisoned. On no better evidence than suspicion they were both sentenced to death—the husband to be hanged and the wife burned alive. Offenders of other categories were brought to the Châtelet. A superintendent of finances, prototype of Fouquet, arrested by the Provost Pierre des Fessarts, and convicted of embezzlement, met his fate in the Châtelet. Strange to say, Des Fessarts himself was arrested four years later and suffered on the same charge. Great numbers of robbers taken red-handed were imprisoned—at one time two hundred thieves, murderers and highwaymen (épieurs de grand chemin). An auditor of the Palace was condemned to make the amende honorable in effigy; a figure of his body in wax being shown at the door of the chapel and then dragged to the pillory to be publicly exposed. Clement Marot, the renowned poet, was committed to the Châtelet at the instance of the beautiful Diane de Poitiers for continually inditing fulsome verses in her praise. Weary at last of her contemptuous silence he penned a bitter satire which Diane resented by accusing him of Lutheranism and of eating bacon in Lent. Marot’s confinement in the Châtelet inspired his famous poem L’Enfer, wherein he compared the Châtelet to the infernal regions and cursed the whole French penal system—prisoners, judges, lawyers and the cruelties of the “question.” Never from the advent of the Reformation did Protestants find much favor in France. In 1557 four hundred Huguenots assembled for service in a house of the Rue St. Jacques and were attacked on leaving it by a number of the neighbors. They fought in self-defense and many made good their escape, but the remainder—one hundred and twenty persons, several among them being ladies of the Court— were arrested by the lieutenant criminel and carried to the Châtelet. They were accused of infamous conduct and although they
- 25. complained to the King they were sent to trial, and within a fortnight nearly all the number were burnt at the stake. Another story runs that the lieutenant criminel forced his way into a house in the Marais where a number of Huguenots were at table. They fled, but the hotel keeper was arrested and charged with having supplied meat in the daily bill of fare on a Friday. For this he was conducted to the Châtelet with his wife and children, a larded capon being carried before them to hold them up to the derision of the bystanders. The incident ended seriously, for the wretched inn-keeper was thrown into a dungeon and died there in misery. Precedence has been given to the two Châtelets in the list of ancient prisons in Paris, but no doubt the Conciergerie runs them close in point of date and was equally formidable. It originally was part of the Royal Palace of the old Kings of France and still preserves as to site, and in some respects as to form, in the Palais de Justice one of the most interesting monuments in modern Paris. “There survives a sense of suffocation in these buildings,” writes Philarète Chasles. “Here are the oldest dungeons of France. Paris had scarcely begun when they were first opened.” “These towers,” says another Frenchman, “the courtyard and the dim passage along which prisoners are still admitted, have tears in their very aspect.” One of the greatest tragedies in history was played out in the Conciergerie almost in our own days, thus bringing down the sad record of bitter sufferings inflicted by man upon man from the Dark Ages to the day of our much vaunted enlightenment. The Conciergerie was the last resting place, before execution, of the hapless Queen Marie Antoinette. When Louis IX, commonly called Saint Louis, rebuilt his palace in the thirteenth century he constructed also his dungeons hard by. The concierge was trusted by the kings with the safe-keeping of their enemies and was the governor of the royal prison. In 1348 he took the title of bailli and the office lasted, with its wide powers often sadly abused, until the collapse of the monarchical régime. A portion of the original Conciergerie as built in the garden of Concierge is still
- 26. extant. Three of the five old towers, circular in shape and with pepper pot roofs, are standing. Of the first, that of Queen Blanche was pulled down in 1853 and that of the Inquisition in 1871. The three now remaining are Cæsar’s Tower, where the reception ward is situated on the very spot where Damiens, the attempted regicide of Louis XV, was interrogated while strapped to the floor; the tower of Silver, the actual residence of “Reine Blanche” and the visiting room where legal advisers confer with their clients among the accused prisoners; and lastly the Bon Bec tower, once the torture chamber and now the hospital and dispensary of the prison. The cells and dungeons of the Conciergerie, some of which might be seen and inspected as late as 1835, were horrible beyond belief. Clement Marot said of it in his verse that it was impossible to conceive a place that more nearly approached a hell upon earth. The loathsomeness of its underground receptacles was inconceivable. It contained some of the worst specimens of the ill-famed oubliettes. An attempt has been made by some modern writers to deny the existence of these oubliettes, but all doubt was removed by discoveries revealed when opening the foundations of the Bon Bec tower. Two subterranean pits were found below the ordinary level of the river Seine and the remains of sharpened iron points protruded from their walls obviously intended to catch the bodies and tear the flesh of those flung into these cavernous depths. Certain of these dungeons were close to the royal kitchens and were long preserved. They are still remembered by the quaint name of the mousetraps (or souricières) in which the inmates were caught and kept au secret, entirely separate and unable to communicate with a single soul but their immediate guardians and gaolers. The torture chamber and the whole paraphernalia for inflicting the “question” were part and parcel of every ancient prison. But the most complete and perfect methods were to be found in the Conciergerie. As a rule, therefore, in the most heinous cases, when the most shocking crimes were under investigation, the accused was relegated to the Conciergerie to undergo treatment by torture. It
- 27. was so in the case of Ravaillac who murdered Henry IV; also the Marchioness of Brinvilliers and the poisoners; and yet again, of Damiens who attempted the life of Louis XV, and many more: to whom detailed references will be found in later pages. The For-l’Évêque, the Bishop’s prison, was situated in the rue St. Germain-l’Auxerrois, and is described in similar terms as the foregoing: “dark, unwholesome and over-crowded.” In the court or principal yard, thirty feet long by eighteen feet wide, some four or five hundred prisoners were constantly confined. The outer walls were of such a height as to forbid the circulation of fresh air and there was not enough to breathe. The cells were more dog-holes than human habitations. In some only six feet square, five prisoners were often lodged at one and the same time. Others were too low in the ceiling for a man to stand upright and few had anything but borrowed light from the yard. Many cells were below the ground level and that of the river bed, so that water filtered in through the arches all the year round, and even in the height of summer the only ventilation was by a slight slit in the door three inches wide. “To pass by an open cell door one felt as if smitten by fire from within,” says a contemporary writer. Access to these cells was by dark, narrow galleries. For long years the whole prison was in such a state of dilapidation that ruin and collapse were imminent. Later For-l’Évêque received insolvent debtors—those against whom lettres de cachet were issued, and actors who were evil livers. It was the curious custom to set these last free for a few hours nightly in order to play their parts at the theatres; but they were still in the custody of the officer of the watch and were returned to gaol after the performance. Many minor offenders guilty of small infractions of the law, found lodging in the For-l’Évêque. Side by side with thieves and roysterers were dishonest usurers who lent trifling sums. All jurisdictions, all authorities could commit to the For-l’Évêque, the judges of inferior tribunals, ministers of state, auditors, grand seigneurs. The prison régime varied for this various population, but poor fare and poorer lodgings were the fate of the larger number.
- 28. Those who could pay found chambers more comfortable, decently furnished, and palatable food. Order was not always maintained. More than once mutinies broke out, generally on account of the villainous ration of bread issued, and it was often found necessary to fire upon the prisoners to subdue them. When the Knights Templars received permission to settle in Paris in the twelfth century, they gradually consolidated their power in the Marais, the marshy ground to the eastward of the Seine, and there laid the foundations of a great stronghold on which the Temple prison was a prominent feature. The knights wielded sovereign power with the rights of high justice and the very kings of France themselves bent before them. At length the arrogance of the order brought it the bitter hostility of Philippe le Bel who, in 1307, broke the power of the order in France. They were pursued and persecuted. Their Grand Master was tortured and executed while the King administered their estate. The prison of the Temple with its great towers and wide encircling walls became a state prison, the forerunner of Vincennes and the Bastile. It received, as a rule, the most illustrious prisoners only, dukes and counts and sovereign lords, and in the Revolutionary period it gained baleful distinction as the condemned cell, so to speak, of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The prison of Bicêtre, originally a bishop’s residence and then successively a house of detention for sturdy beggars and a lunatic asylum, was first built at the beginning of the thirteenth century. It was owned by John, Bishop of Winchester in England, and its name was a corruption of the word Winchester—“Vinchester” and so “Bichestre” and, eventually, “Bicêtre.” It was confiscated to the King in the fourteenth century and Charles VI dated his letters from that castle. It fell into a ruinous state in the following years and nothing was done to it until it was rebuilt by Louis XIII as a hospital for invalid soldiers and became, with the Salpêtrière, the abode of the paupers who so largely infested Paris. The hospital branch of the prison was used for the treatment of certain discreditable disorders, sufferers from which were regularly flogged at the time of their
- 29. treatment by the surgeons. An old writer stigmatised the prison as a terrible ulcer that no one dared look at and which poisoned the air for four hundred yards around. Bicêtre was the home for all vagabonds and masterless men, the sturdy beggars who demanded alms sword in hand, and soldiers who, when their pay was in arrears, robbed upon the highway. Epileptics and the supposed mentally diseased, whether they were actually proved so or not, were committed to Bicêtre and after reception soon degenerated into imbeciles and raging lunatics. The terrors of underground Bicêtre have been graphically described by Masers-Latude, who had personal experience of them. This man, Danry or Latude, has been called a fictitious character, but the memoirs attributed to him are full of realism and cannot be entirely neglected. He says of Bicêtre: “In wet weather or when it thawed in winter, water streamed from all parts of our cell. I was crippled with rheumatism and the pains were such that I was sometimes whole weeks without getting up. The window-sill guarded by an iron grating gave on to a corridor, the wall of which was placed exactly opposite at a height of ten feet. A glimmer of light came through this aperture and was accompanied by snow and rain. I had neither fire nor artificial light and prison rags were my only clothing. To quench my thirst I sucked morsels of ice broken off with the heel of my wooden shoe. If I stopped up the window I was nearly choked by the effluvium from the cellars. Insects stung me in the eyes. I had always a bad taste in my mouth and my lungs were horribly oppressed. I was detained in that cell for thirty-eight months enduring the pangs of hunger, cold and damp. I was attacked by scurvy and was presently unable to sit or rise. In ten days my legs and thighs were swollen to twice their ordinary size. My body turned black. My teeth loosened in their sockets and I could no longer masticate. I could not speak and was thought to be dead. Then the surgeon came, and seeing my state ordered me to be removed to the infirmary.” An early victim of Bicêtre was the Protestant Frenchman, Salomon de Caus, who had lived much in England and Germany and had
- 30. already, at the age of twenty, gained repute as an architect, painter and engineer. One of his inventions was an apparatus for forcing up water by a steam fountain; and that eminent scientist, Arago, declares that De Caus preceded Watt as an inventor of steam mechanisms. It was De Caus’s misfortune to fall desperately in love with the notorious Marion Delorme. When his attentions became too demonstrative this fiendish creature applied for a lettre de cachet from Richelieu. De Caus was invited to call upon the Cardinal, whom he startled with his marvellous schemes. Richelieu thought himself in the presence of a madman and forthwith ordered De Caus to Bicêtre. Two years later Marion Delorme visited Bicêtre and was recognised by De Caus as she passed his cell. He called upon her piteously by name, and her companion, the English Marquis of Worcester, asked if she knew him, but she repudiated the acquaintance. Lord Worcester was, however, attracted by the man and his inventions, and afterwards privately visited him, giving his opinion later that a great genius had run to waste in this mad-house. Bicêtre was subsequently associated with the galleys and was starting point of the chain of convicts directed upon the arsenals of Toulon, Rochefort, Lorient and Brest. A full account of these modern prisons is reserved for a later chapter. The prison of Sainte Pélagie was founded in the middle of the seventeenth century by a charitable lady, Marie l’Hermite, in the faubourg Sainte Marcel, as a refuge for ill-conducted women, those who came voluntarily and those who were committed by dissatisfied fathers or husbands. It became, subsequently, a debtors’ prison. The Madelonnettes were established about the same time and for the same purpose, by a wine merchant, Robert Montri, devoted to good works. The prison of St. Lazare, to-day the great female prison of Paris, appears to have been originally a hospital for lepers, and was at that time governed by the ecclesiastical authority. It was the home of various communities, till in 1630 the lepers disappeared, and it became a kind of seminary or place of detention for weak- minded persons and youthful members of good position whose
- 31. families desired to subject them to discipline and restraint. The distinction between St. Lazare and the Bastile was well described by a writer who said, “If I had been a prisoner in the Bastile I should on release have taken my place among genres de bien (persons of good social position) but on leaving Lazare I should have ranked with the mauvais sujets (ne’er do weels).” A good deal remains to be said about St. Lazare in its modern aspects.
- 32. CHAPTER II STRUGGLE WITH THE SOVEREIGN Provincial prisons—Loches, in Touraine, still standing—Favorite gaol of Louis XI— The iron cage—Cardinal La Balue, the Duc d’Alençon, Comines, the Bishops— Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and his mournful inscriptions—Diane de Poitiers and her father—Mont St. Michel—Louis Napoleon—Count St. Pol— Strongholds of Touraine—Catherine de Medicis—Massacre of St Bartholomew —Murder of Duc de Guise—Chambord—Amboise—Angers—Pignerol—Exiles and the Isle St. Marguerite. The early history of France is made up of the continuous struggle between the sovereign and the people. The power of the king, though constantly opposed by the great vassals and feudal lords, steadily grew and gained strength. The state was meanwhile torn with dissensions and passed through many succeeding periods of anarchy and great disorders. The king’s power was repeatedly challenged by rivals and pretenders. It was weakened, and at times eclipsed, but in the long run it always triumphed. The king always vindicated his right to the supreme authority and, when he could, ruled arbitrarily and imperiously, backed and supported by attributes of autocracy which gradually overcame all opposition and finally established a despotic absolutism. The principal prisons of France were royal institutions. Two in particular, the chief and most celebrated, Vincennes and the Bastile, were seated in the capital. With these I shall deal presently at considerable length. Many others, provincial strongholds and castles, were little less conspicuous and mostly of evil reputation. I shall deal with those first. Loches in the Touraine, some twenty-five miles from Tours, will go down in history as one of the most famous, or more exactly,
- 33. infamous castles in mediæval France. It was long a favored royal palace, a popular residence with the Plantagenet and other kings, but degenerated at length under Louis XI into a cruel and hideous gaol. It stands to-day in elevated isolation dominating a flat, verdant country, just as the well-known Mont St. Michel rises above the sands on the Normandy coast. The most prominent object is the colossal white donjon, or central keep, esteemed the finest of its kind in France, said to have been erected by Fulk Nerra, the celebrated “Black Count,” Count of Anjou in the eleventh century. It is surrounded by a congeries of massive buildings of later date. Just below it are the round towers of the Martelet, dating from Louis XI, who placed within them the terrible dungeons he invariably kept filled. At the other end of the long lofty plateau is another tower, that of Agnes Sorel, the personage whose influence over Charles VII, although wrongly acquired, was always exercised for good, and whose earnest patriotism inspired him to strenuous attempts to recover France from its English invaders. Historians have conceded to her a place far above the many kings’ mistresses who have reigned upon the left hand of the monarchs of France. Agnes was known as the lady of “Beauté-sur-Marne,” “a beauty in character as well as in aspect,” and is said to have been poisoned at Junièges. She was buried at Loches with the inscription, still legible, “A sweet and simple dove whiter than swans, redder than the flame.” The face, still distinguishable, preserves the “loveliness of flowers in spring.” After the death of Charles VII, the priests of Saint-Ours desired to expel this tomb. But Louis XI was now on the throne. He had not hesitated to insult Agnes Sorel while living, upbraiding her openly and even, one day at court, striking her in the face with his glove, but he would only grant their request on condition that they surrender the many rich gifts bestowed upon them at her hands. It is, however, in its character as a royal gaol and horrible prison house that Loches concerns us. Louis XI, saturnine and vindictive, found it exactly suited to his purpose for the infliction of those barbarous and inhuman penalties upon those who had offended him, that must ever disgrace his name. The great donjon, already
- 34. mentioned, built by Fulk Nerra, the “Black Count,” had already been used by him as a prison and the rooms occupied by the Scottish Guard are still to be seen. The new tower at the northwest angle of the fortress was the work of Louis and on the ground floor level is the torture chamber, with an iron bar recalling its ancient usage. Below are four stories, one beneath the other. These dungeons, entered by a subterranean door give access to the vaulted semi-dark interior. Above this gloomy portal is scratched the jesting welcome, “Entrez Messieurs—ches le Roi nostre maistre,”—“Come in, the King is at home.” At this gateway the King stood frequently with his chosen companions, his barber and the common hangman, to gloat over the sufferings of his prisoners. In a cell on the second story from the bottom, the iron cage was established, so fiendishly contrived for the unending pain of its occupant. Comines, the “Father of modern historians,” gives in his memoirs a full account of this detestable place of durance. Comines fell into disgrace with Anne of Beaujeu by fomenting rebellion against her administration as Regent. He fled and took refuge with the Duke de Bourbon, whom he persuaded to go to the King, the infant Charles VIII, to complain of Anne’s misgovernment. Comines was dismissed by the Duke de Bourbon and took service with the Duke d’Orleans. Their intrigues were secretly favored by the King himself, who, as he grew older, became impatient of the wise but imperious control of Anne of Beaujeu. In concert with some other nobles, Comines plotted to carry off the young King and place him under the guardianship of the Duke d’Orleans. Although Charles was a party to the design he punished them when it failed. Comines was arrested at Amboise and taken to Loches, where he was confined for eight months. Then by decree of the Paris parliament his property was confiscated and he was brought to Paris to be imprisoned in the Conciergerie. There he remained for twenty months, and in March, 1489, was condemned to banishment to one of his estates for ten years and to give bail for his good behavior to the amount of 10,000 golden crowns. He was forgiven long before
- 35. the end of his term and regained his seat and influence in the King’s Council of State. “The King,” says Comines, “had ordered several cruel prisons to be made; some were cages of iron and some of wood, but all were covered with iron plates both within and without, with terrible locks, about eight feet wide and seven feet high; the first contriver of them was the Bishop of Verdun (Guillaume d’Haraucourt) who was immediately put into the first of them, where he continued fourteen years. Many bitter curses he has had since his invention, and some from me as I lay in one of them eight months together during the minority of our present King. He (Louis XI) also ordered heavy and terrible fetters to be made in Germany and particularly a certain ring for the feet which was extremely hard to be opened and fitted like an iron collar, with a thick weighty chain and a great globe of iron at the end of it, most unreasonably heavy, which engine was called the King’s Nets. However, I have seen many eminent men, deserving persons in these prisons with these nets about their legs, who afterwards came out with great joy and honor and received great rewards from the king.” Another occupant beside d’Haraucourt, of this intolerable den, so limited in size that “no person of average proportions could stand up comfortably or be at full length within,” was Cardinal la Balue,—for some years after 1469. These two great ecclesiastics had been guilty of treasonable correspondence with the Duke of Burgundy, then at war with Louis XI. The treachery was the more base in La Balue, who owed everything to Louis, who had raised him from a tailor’s son to the highest dignities in the Church and endowed him with immense wealth. Louis had a strong bias towards low-born men and “made his servants, heralds and his barbers, ministers of state.” Louis would have sent this traitor to the scaffold, but ever bigoted and superstitious, he was afraid of the Pope, Paul II, who had protested against the arrest of a prelate and a prince of the Church. He kept d’Haraucourt, the Bishop of Verdun, in prison for many years, for the most part at the Bastile while Cardinal La Balue was
- 36. moved to and fro: he began at Loches whence, with intervals at Onzain, Montpaysan, and Plessis-lez-Tours, he was brought periodically to the Bastile in order that his tormentor might gloat personally over his sufferings. This was the servant of whom Louis once thought so well that he wrote of him as “a good sort of devil of a bishop just now, but there is no saying what he may grow into by and by.” He endured the horrors of imprisonment until within three years of the death of the King, who, after a long illness and a paralytic seizure, yielded at last to the solicitations of the then Pope, Sixtus IV, to release him. The “Bishops’ Prison” is still shown at Loches, a different receptacle from the cages and dungeons occupied by Cardinal La Balue and the Bishop of Verdun. These other bishops did their own decorations akin to Sforza’s, but their rude presentment was of an altar and cross roughly depicted on the wall of their cell. Some confusion exists as to their identity, but they are said to have been De Pompadour, Bishop of Peregneux, and De Chaumont, Bishop of Montauban, and their offense was complicity in the conspiracy for which Comines suffered. If this were so it must have been after the reign of Louis XI. Among the many victims condemned by Louis XI to the tender mercies of Loches, was the Duc d’Alençon, who had already been sentenced to death in the previous reign for trafficking with the English, but whose life had been spared by Charles VII, to be again forfeited to Louis XI, for conspiracy with the Duke of Burgundy. His sentence was commuted to imprisonment in Loches. A few more words about Loches. Descending more than a hundred steps we reach the dungeon occupied by Ludovico Sforza, called “Il Moro,” Duke of Milan, who had long been in conflict with France. The epithet applied to him was derived from the mulberry tree, which from the seasons of its flowers and its fruit was taken as an emblem of “prudence.” The name was wrongly supposed to be due to his dark Moorish complexion. After many successes the fortune of war went against Sforza and he was beaten by Trionlzio, commanding
- 37. the French army, who cast him into the prison of Novara. Il Moro was carried into France, his destination being the underground dungeon at Loches. Much pathos surrounds the memory of this illustrious prisoner, who for nine years languished in a cell so dark that light entered it only through a slit in fourteen feet of rock. The only spot ever touched by daylight is still indicated by a small square scratched on the stone floor. Ludovico Sforza strove to pass the weary hours by decorating his room with rough attempts at fresco. The red stars rendered in patterns upon the wall may still be seen, and among them, twice repeated, a prodigious helmet giving a glimpse through the casque of the stern, hard looking face inside. A portrait of Il Moro is extant at the Certosa, near Pavia, and has been described as that of a man “with the fat face and fine chin of the elderly Napoleon, the beak-like nose of Wellington, a small, querulous, neat-lipped mouth and immense eyebrows stretched like the talons of an eagle across the low forehead.” Ludovico Sforza left his imprint on the walls of this redoubtable gaol and we may read his daily repinings in the mournful inscriptions he recorded among the rough red decorations. One runs: “My motto is to arm myself with patience, to bear the troubles laid upon me.” He who would have faced death eagerly in open fight declares here that he was “assailed by it and could not die.” He found “no pity; gaiety was banished entirely from his heart.” At length, after struggling bravely for nearly nine years he was removed from the lower dungeons to an upper floor and was permitted to exercise occasionally in the open air till death came, with its irresistible order of release. The picture of his first passage through Paris to his living tomb has been admirably drawn:—“An old French street surging with an eager mob, through which there jostles a long line of guards and archers; in their midst a tall man dressed in black camlet, seated on a mule. In his hands he holds his biretta and lifts up unshaded his pale, courageous face, showing in all his bearing a great contempt for death. It is Ludovico, Duke of Milan, riding to his cage at Loches.”
- 38. It is not to the credit of Louis XII and his second wife, Anne of Brittany, widow of his predecessor Charles VIII, that they often occupied Loches as a royal residence during the incarceration of Ludovico Sforza, and made high festival upstairs while their wretched prisoner languished below. The rebellion of the Constable de Bourbon against Francis I, in 1523, implicated two more bishops, those of Puy and Autun. Bourbon aspired to create an independent kingdom in the heart of France and was backed by the Emperor Charles V. The Sieur de Brézé, Seneschal of Normandy, the husband of the famous Diane de Poitiers, revealed the conspiracy to the King, Francis I, unwittingly implicating Jean de Poitiers, his father-in-law. Bourbon, flying to one of his fortified castles, sent the Bishop of Autun to plead for him with the King, who only arrested the messenger. Bourbon, continuing his flight, stopped a night at Puy in Auvergne, and this dragged in the second bishop. Jean de Poitiers, Seigneur de St. Vallier, was also thrown into Loches, whence the prisoner appealed to his daughter and his son-in-law. “Madame,” he wrote to Diane, “here am I arrived at Loches as badly handled as any prisoner could be. I beg of you to have so much pity as to come and visit your poor father.” Diane strove hard with the pitiless king, who only pressed on the trial, urging the judges to elicit promptly all the particulars and the names of the conspirators, if necessary by torture. St. Vallier’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment, “between four walls of solid masonry with but one small slit of window.” The Constable de Bourbon made St. Vallier’s release a condition of submission, and Diane de Poitiers, ever earnestly begging for mercy, won pardon at length, which she took in person to her father’s gloomy cell, where his hair had turned white in the continual darkness. The wretched inmates of Loches succeeded each other, reign after reign in an interminable procession. One of the most ill-used was de Rochechouart, nephew of the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, who was mixed up in a court intrigue in 1633 and detained in Loches with no proof against him in the hopes of extorting a confession.
- 39. Mont St. Michel as a State prison is of still greater antiquity than Loches, far older than the stronghold for which it was admirably suited by its isolated situation on the barren sea shore. It is still girt round with mediæval walls from which rise tall towers proclaiming its defensive strength. Its church and Benedictine monastery are of ancient foundation, dating back to the eighth century. It was taken under the especial protection of Duke Rollo and contributed shipping for the invading hosts of William the Conqueror. Later, in the long conflict with the English, when their hosts over-ran Normandy, Mont St. Michel was the only fortress which held out for the French king. The origin of its dungeons and oubliettes is lost in antiquity. It had its cage like Loches, built of metal bars, but for these solid wooden beams were afterwards substituted. Modern sentiment hangs about the citadel of Ham near Amiens, as the prison house of Louis Napoleon and his companions, Generals Cavaignac, Changarnier and Lamoricière, after his raid upon Boulogne, in 1830, when he prematurely attempted to seize supreme power in France and ignominiously failed. Ham had been a place of durance for political purposes from the earliest times. There was a castle before the thirteenth century and one was erected on the same site in 1470 by the Count St. Pol, whom Louis XI beheaded. The motto of the family “Mon mieux” (my best) may still be read engraved over the gateway. Another version is to the effect that St. Pol was committed to the Bastile and suffered within that fortress-gaol. He appears to have been a restless malcontent forever concerned in the intrigues of his time, serving many masters and betraying all in turn. He gave allegiance now to France, now England, now Burgundy and Lorraine, but aimed secretly to make himself an independent prince trusting to his great wealth, his ambitious self-seeking activity and his unfailing perfidies. In the end the indignant sovereigns turned upon him and agreed to punish him. St. Pol finding himself in jeopardy fled from France after seeking for a safe conduct through Burgundy. Charles the Bold replied by seizing his person and handing him over to Louis XI, who had claimed the prisoner. “I want a head like his to control a certain business in
- 40. hand; his body I can do without and you may keep it,” was Louis’s request. St. Pol, according to this account, was executed on the Place de la Grève. It may be recalled that Ham was also for a time the prison of Joan of Arc; and many more political prisoners, princes, marshals of France, and ministers of state were lodged there. The smiling verdant valley of the Loire, which flows through the historic province of Touraine, is rich in ancient strongholds that preserve the memories of mediæval France. It was the home of those powerful feudal lords, the turbulent vassals who so long contended for independence with their titular masters, weak sovereigns too often unable to keep them in subjection. They raised the round towers and square impregnable donjons, resisting capture in the days before siege artillery, all of which have their gruesome history, their painful records showing the base uses which they served, giving effect to the wicked will of heartless, unprincipled tyrants. Thus, as we descend the river, we come to Blois, with its spacious castle at once formidable and palatial, stained with many blood- thirsty deeds when vicious and unscrupulous kings held their court there. Great personages were there imprisoned and sometimes assassinated. At first the fief of the Counts of Blois, it later passed into the possession of the crown and became the particular property of the dukes of Orleans. It was the favorite residence of that duke who became King Louis XII of France, and his second queen, Anne of Brittany. His son, Francis I, enlarged and beautified it, and his son again, Henry II, married a wife, Catherine de Medicis, who was long associated with Blois and brought much evil upon it. Catherine is one of the blackest female figures in French history; “niece of a pope, mother of four Valois, a Queen of France, widow of an ardent enemy of the Huguenots, an Italian Catholic, above all a Medicis,” hers was a dissolute wicked life, her hands steeped in blood, her moral character a reproach to womankind. Her favorite device was “odiate e aspettate,” “hate and wait,” and when she called anyone “friend” it boded ill for him; she was already plotting his ruin. She no doubt
- 41. inspired, and is to be held responsible for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the murder of the Duc de Guise in this very castle of Blois was largely her doing. It was one of the worst of the many crimes committed in the shameful reign of her son Henry III, the contemptible king with his unnatural affections, his effeminate love of female attire, his little dogs, his loathsome favorites and his nauseating mockeries of holiness. His court was a perpetual scene of intrigue, conspiracy, superstition, the lowest vices, cowardly assassinations and murderous duels. One of the most infamous of these was a fight between three of his particular associates and three of the Guises, when four of the combatants were killed. The famous league of the “Sixteen,” headed by the Duc de Guise, would have carried Henry III back to Paris and held him there a prisoner, but the King was resolved to strike a blow on his own behalf and determined to kill Guise. The States General was sitting at Blois and Guise was there taking the leading part. The famous Crillon, one of his bravest soldiers, was invited to do the deed but refused, saying he was a soldier and not an executioner. Then one of Henry’s personal attendants offered his services with the forty-five guards, and it was arranged that the murder should be committed in the King’s private cabinet. Guise was summoned to an early council, but the previous night he had been cautioned by a letter placed under his napkin. “He would not dare,” Guise wrote underneath the letter and threw it under the table. Next morning he proceeded to the cabinet undeterred. The King had issued daggers to his guards, saying, “Guise or I must die,” and went to his prayers. When Guise lifted the curtain admitting him into the cabinet one of the guards stabbed him in the breast. A fierce struggle ensued, in which the Duke dragged his murderers round the room before they could dispatch him. “The beast is dead, so is the poison,” was the King’s heartless remark, and he ran to tell his mother that he was “once more master of France.” This cowardly act did not serve the King, for it stirred up the people of Paris, who vowed vengeance. Henry at once made overtures to the Huguenots and next year fell a victim to the knife of a fanatic monk at Saint Clou.
- 42. Blois ceased to be the seat of the Court after Henry III. Louis XIII, when he came to the throne, imprisoned his mother Marie de Medicis there. It was a time of great political stress when executions were frequent, and much sympathy was felt for Marie de Medicis. A plot was set on foot to release her from Blois. A party of friends arranged the escape. She descended from her window by a rope ladder, accompanied by a single waiting-woman. Many accidents supervened: there was no carriage, the royal jewels had been overlooked, time was lost in searching for the first and recovering the second, but at length Marie was free to continue her criminal machinations. Her chief ally was Gaston d’Orleans, who came eventually to live and die on his estate at Blois. He was a cowardly, self indulgent prince but had a remarkable daughter, Marie de Montpensier, commonly called “La Grande Mademoiselle,” who was the heroine of many stirring adventures, some of which will be told later on. Not far from Blois are Chambord, an ancient fortress, first transformed into a hunting lodge and later into a magnificent palace, a perfect wilderness of dressed stone; Chaumont, the birth-place of Cardinal d’Amboise and at one time the property of Catherine de Medicis; Amboise, the scene of the great Huguenot massacre of which more on a later page; Chenonceaux, Henri II’s gift to Diane de Poitiers, which Catherine took from her, and in which Mary Queen of Scots spent a part of her early married life; Langeais, an Angevin fortress of the middle ages; Azay-le-Rideau, a perfect Renaissance chateau; Fontevrault, where several Plantagenet kings found burial, and Chinon, a triple castle now irretrievably ruined, to which Jeanne d’Arc came seeking audience of the King, when Charles VII formally presented her with a suit of knight’s armor and girt on her the famous sword, said to have been picked up by Charles Martel on the Field of Tours after that momentous victory which checked the Moorish invasion, and but for which the dominion of Islam would probably have embraced western Europe.
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