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falaise is cliff
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 11, 1999 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: Hold the Fort!
--Andelys
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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