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He espieth it at the head of the forest, and seeth that it is large and strong, with strong barbicans embattelled, and at the entrance of the gateway were fifteen heads of knights hanging. He found without a knight that came from the forest, and asked him what castle it was, and he made answer that it was called the Castle of the Griffon. "And why are these heads hanging at this door?"
The city from the foothills as you look out upon it seems an island forest of tall towers, surrounded by a verdant plain. "A wall 9350 meters in length, protected by a deep moat, surrounds the city. Every one hundred and sixty meters there is a tower forty meters high and fourteen meters broad. The twelve gates, six on the left bank of the river and six on the right, are strengthened by barbicans.
It is surrounded on three sides by a mud wall about twenty feet high, flanked, at distances of 250 feet, by bastions, which, like the walls, are pierced with a large number of barbicans for musketry.
Here were palisades of burning orange with barbicans of incandescent bronze; there aiguilles of azure rising from bastions of cinnabar red; turrets of royal purple, obelisks of indigo; titanic forts whose walls were splashed with vermilion, with citron yellows and with rust of rubies; watch towers of flaming scarlet.
Meantime the prudent Freibergers had not in the least relaxed their diligence in filling up the enemy's trenches and destroying their batteries, while repairing their own barbicans and moat, building the former up with gabions, and strengthening the latter with a stout wooden parapet.
December 22, 1340, three contractors, Isnard and Raymond Durand and Jacques Gasquet, received 1,273 florins for the completed new tower, with its barbicans, battlements and machicoulis, which was on the site and which retained the appellation of the Tour de la Campane, or Bell Tower.
These, with their Barbicans, three of which were so needlessly and callously destroyed in the last century, were magnificent examples of noble permanent military architecture. The outer façade of Monk Bar to-day, spoiled as it is, expresses a noble strength. There was formerly only the single way, both for ingress and egress.
"My friend said, 'What shall we do now? "'We will have to keep the spy a prisoner until we escape. "'But they will search for him in the morning and in doing so will visit this cell in my absence. "'I will don his cowl and habit over my armor and we will escape tonight. "'That is impossible, all portals are closed and guarded by watchmen stationed in the barbicans over each gateway.
You advance and walk between those walls and under the trees, wander along the barbicans, pass under the falling arcades from which spring large, waving plants. The vaults, which contain corpses, echo under your footfalls; lizards run in the grass, beetles creep along the walls, the sky is blue, and the sleepy ruins pursue their dream.
Freiberg has never been besieged again; yet what the artillery and mines of the warlike foe failed to accomplish, has been brought about long since by the genial beams of golden peace. Freiberg's strong gates and barbicans, her towers, walls, and moats, have, for the most part, passed away.
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