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Updated: May 15, 2025
As we came galloping around a curve in the river I cannot insist too strongly upon the dashing impetuosity that was the constant buoyant undertone of our voyage this Tournon the blessed shot up before us perked out upon a bold little hill thrust forward into the stream: a crowd of heavily-built houses rising around a church or two and a personable campanile, with here and there bits of crenellated ramparts, and higher still the tough remnant of a castle still fit to do service in the wars.
The country hereabouts is a level plain, extending eastward to the Furrah Rood; within the first few miles adjacent to the Harood are seen the crenellated walls of several villages and the crumbling ruins of as many more. Clumps of palm-trees and fields of alfalfa and green young wheat environ the villages, and help to render the dull gray ruins picturesque.
They strolled first to the crenellated wall of the courtyard along which there was a high walk from which you looked down upon the boat-house and the little jetty this wall made the fourth side of the courtyard, and with the gate tower, and the concierge's tower across the causeway, and part of the garden elevation, was the very oldest of the whole château, and dated from early feudal times.
White, all white, from the lake that washes its lowest walls to the crenellated rim of its highest roof, it sweeps upward in breath-taking steps and wide terraces to the crest of the western hill, into which it burrows, from which it springs; a vast enigma propounded in white marble without a note of colour save where the foliage of a hidden garden peeps over the edge of a jealous screen a hundred imposing mansions merged into one monstrous and imperial maze.
Two of its old gates, part of the wall, and the crenellated tower still stand, with ruined convents and monasteries of Capuchins, Cordeliers, and Ursulines; and it may be inferred from the remains of the Bishop's Palace and the broad promenade which was one of its avenues, and from the episcopal château at Montagnac, that ecclesiastical state was not less worthily upheld at Riez than in the other Sees of the South of France.
Architecturally, the barrage is very beautiful, with a noble front and a grand effect, produced by a line of castellated turrets, which mark the site of the sluice gates. There are two lofty crenellated towers, corresponding with the towers over the gateway of a mediaeval baronial castle.
The barge swung round a reach, and the lights of the palace of Greenwich were like a flight of dim or bright squares in mid air, far ahead. The King's barge was already illuminating the crenellated arch at the top of the river steps. A burst of torches flared out to meet it and disappeared.
Continuing to ascend past the double rampart, the double or triple gates, which all these old fortresses possess, we penetrate at length into a large fortified courtyard, the crenellated walls of which shut out our further view. Soldiers are on guard there and how unexpected are such soldiers in this holy place of Egypt!
Longueville, every morning after breakfast, took a turn in the great square of Siena the vast piazza, shaped like a horse-shoe, where the market is held beneath the windows of that crenellated palace from whose overhanging cornice a tall, straight tower springs up with a movement as light as that of a single plume in the bonnet of a captain.
Crenellated walls, a park of artillery, and roomy English barracks greet the vision. Sentinels Sepoy sentinels in huge turbans, and English sentinels in white sun-helmets are pacing their beats. But not on these does the gaze of the visitor rest.
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