Moulineaux Castle

History of the castle

The Castle of Moulineaux was built towards XIème XlIème centuries. Richard Lion Heart remained there. His successor, Jean without Ground, 13th duke of Normandîe left there in 1204, to go to assassinate in Rouen his Arthur nephew of Brittany.

In meanwhile, the King of France, Philippe Auguste undertaking, the conquest of Normandy, invests in Andelys fears it earlier considered impregnable, built ten years per Richard Lion Heart.

Jean without Ground thinking of delaying the triumph of Philippe made dismantle the small fortress of Moulineaux and took refuge in his kingdom of England. Thus the Kings of England lost Normandy. Thus were separate Normandy and England whose in 1066, Guillaume the Bastard one had made, with the blessing of the Pope, the Norman kingdom anglo. Attaching much price to the bolt of Moulineaux, Philippe raised some, first once the castle.

It is that the small fortified town controlled the entry of Rouen where the King of France built the castle in which in 1430-1431 Jeanne d' Arc was imprisoned. Castle which was demolished in XVIe century. One has the list of the captains who kept in the name of King de France, the bastion of Moulineaux. In 1418 believing Rouennais, in their turn, the im. strategic bearing pressure of Moulineaux sacrificed of them the turns and made them jump. With their opinion, there was what to prevent the English from strengthening years their conquest of our Province. They were mistaken because the English lived Rouen of 1418 to 1449.

Consequently, the ruins were the prey of the plunderers, the brigands, rejected, the owls, the large dukes, the phantoms. During centuries nobody dared any more to live on the hill. The inhabitants of Moulineaux signed themselves while passing in trimmings and ventured there, never at the fallen night, the ruins emerged from the forest to sink in the fog or the darkness. It was told that the evening, the low clouds transported in their voyage, the fantastic silhouette of the walls, the marks of all those which had perished while venturing in the ruins.

At the beginning of the XIXe century, the romantic ones ground in Moulineaux. German engravings represent the ruins springing over the undergrowth, the brambles, the wild muriers. In 1870, the francs gunners fought there. The Prussians spent more men for the catch of Moulineaux than for adhesive of Le Havre.

The modern history of the Robert Castle the Devil starts really only in 1903. The owner of the hill Mr. Oscar Cosserat made clear the vestiges of the Castle, raised by Philippe Auguste. Boldly, it dreamed to restore with the landscape the old fortress. It rebuilds in North the tower of Rouen, in the South that of Bourgtheroulde, consolidated the undergrounds. Thanks to him the Robert Castle the Devil ressuscita of his ashes.

The Rouennais Sunday visited sometimes the Castle. A small museum in which memories collected at the time of the excavations in 1903 were exposed, had been arranged in the Large Tower. In four years of 1940 to 1944 whole that disappeared, stolen, dispersed, destroyed, ransacked.

Ten years after in 1953, Roger Parment undertook with a handle of friends to once more save these secular, always given up and always protected ruins. April 12, 1954, the Robert Castle the Devil was returned in Rouennais on the Hill of Moulineaux. I.e., that they could finally visit the ruins, without risk to fall at the bottom from a well 114 meters, without to be precipitated risk top of the ramparts or ridge of the Turns. They could in all quietude, while being let guide through the undergrounds and the arranged rooms, to visit this incomparable framework from where one discovers one of the most beautiful panoramas of Normandy.

Text of Roger Parment (but not translated by the author)