Castle of Hunaudaye

History of the castle

It is in Brittany many castles in ruins: many was imposing fortresses whose walls succumbed under the attacks of the warriors and the blows of the time to which, sometimes, the revolutionary vandals lent the hand.

Some go up well beyond XVème century, at the time where feudality was very powerful. Others are older still. Their walls are collapsed partly, but what it of remainder attests that those which built them could link, in a sometimes formidable unit, elegance and the force. It is the impression which one carries when one visits, in the commune of Plédéliac, the castle of Hunaudaye, whose ruins, become the prey of brambles and ivies, are drawn up like a majestic challenge at time, in a site of a savage size.

The five enormous turns which flanked it still upright, but are decapitated. The part which was remained livable was burnt in 1793. The castle of Hunaudaye is old seven centuries. Its construction by Olivier Tournemine goes up at the year 1220 and its name would come to him from the current village of Midsummer's Day much older than him, which named then the City-Hunaudaye and to which it was very close.

Originating in England, the house of Tournemine was allied in Penthièvre. Among its members it is who were true gangsters and who did not move back in front of the flight and the assassination. It is Geffroi Tournemine which plunders and holds to ransom Plancoët and steals the sacred vessels of the vault of Lesberroit; it is Pierre Tournemine who stops the bishop of Saint-Brieuc crossing the forest of Hunaudaye in 1384, removes his horses to him and its luggage and returns freedom to him only with the help of ransom. Two years later, December 20, 1386, this same Pierre Tournemine assassinates his father-in-law Jean de Beaumanoir. He confesses his crime and tries to be justified. But the Due one of Brittany decides, at the request of Robert de Beaumanoir, wire of the victim, to resort to the judgement of God. The legal duel takes place in the presence of all the court. Pierre Tournemine is embanked by his adversary which, liberally, instead of completing it or to make it hang, makes him grace.

At some time from there, Jean Eder de Beaumanoir married Marie de Villiers, rams of Homet of Bérardière, dowager of Hunaudaye, mother of George and Jean de Tournemine. Dissatisfied with this marriage, two young people attracted, under pretext of a shooting party, their father-in-law in the forest of Hunaudaye and loosely made it assassinate under their eyes by Jean of Breil and one their bastard brothers.

The tradition ensures that well of other dramas were held in Hunaudaye. The castle had become an object of terror. Nobody dared to venture in the surroundings. Tournemine did not respect anything. The queen Anne, itself, crossing the forest at the time of her voyage to Brittany to go to Folgoët, were stopped and led in the presence of the lord of the places. He made it treat with regard, but supported that he had the right to put at ransom whoever passed daN -, his vicinity without his permission. He came one time when the rumour, increasing on the truth, showed the dreaded Master of the proud residence to have assassinated his/her father, his wife and her brother. He could not any more, said one, to know softnesses of the sleep. One night, a draped knight of a red coat presented himself in front of the lord of the manor. Celuici called its people to punish this unknown which dared to penetrate in its room without to have been made announce. As no one did not answer its call, it saw, behind the man with the red coat, three spectra between opening their shroud and showing their bored and bloody centre.

- I do not have other guard, known as the knight: this old man, it is your father; this woman it is your wife; this young man, it is your brother. They come to seek you so that from now on you residences with them. At this time a violent one storm burst. The ridge of the turns, struck by the lightning, broke down. When, the following day, one penetrated in the lord of the manor, one found it dead on the ground.