Le château de Josselin - Visites privées

First of all, Britain is a land of resistance. And if it is an institution that demonstrates it, it is the illustrious Château de Josselin. Built 1,000 years ago, this incredible building was the scene of terrible clashes, especially between the Dukes of Britain and the Kings of France. Destroyed and rebuilt over the centuries, this castle is still today an emblem of these great power struggles. That's what we can say, right Pauline? Absolutely, and you will see that the family of Rouen, who have been living there for more than 1,000 years, the same family, in the same stones, you will see, there have been many adventures, but they are still resisting, and now it is time to save this castle. And I was literally adopted. It was really a very moving moment for me, because Antoinette and Monsieur le Duc Josselin literally adopted me. You will see, I had a great time with them. It's the principle of private visits. Let's go to the Morbihan, to the discovery of this amazing institution, the castle of Josselin. Look behind me, this castle of Count de Fée. It is the castle of Josselin, the most beautiful castle of Britain. And for good reason, it is the cradle of the family of Rouen, who have been living there for more than 1,000 years. Settled, destroyed, rebuilt, it is a symbol of resistance. And for private visits, it is the Rouens in person who will receive me. And together we will go back in time. An extraordinary family remains extraordinary. The castle plays a crucial role in the history of power struggles between the dukes of Britain and the kings of France. They want to bring down the Bretons. Josselin becomes, over the centuries, a place that symbolizes all the resistance of the Bretons against French domination. And hello Josselin. Hello Pauline. Thank you for welcoming us. Well, it's a pleasure. But then wait, you are called Josselin, we are at Josselin. When you have a title on your name, you keep it, I have the impression. Since the 19th century, there is a family tradition that is that we alternate between Josselin and Alain. So here we are in front of the most spectacular facade, Josselin, of your castle. It is a facade called Renaissance or flamboyant Gothic, is that right? It is a composite facade because you have elements of flamboyant Gothic and then the luxury that you can observe on this facade is quite the mark of the Renaissance. So it's a facade that is unique in its kind. You wouldn't find anything like it elsewhere. First, because it was made of grain, which is a particularly hard material. It is an achievement to have been able to make this stone lace. And besides, it is a facade that is very interesting because it tells a story. It is a testimony that you give, the one who gave it, of its power and its radiance. So, there is something that caught my attention when I arrived, which is that there is written on this facade, A PLUS. What does that mean? Are you saying goodbye to us? No, A PLUS is the motto of the RAND family. Okay. It means to go further, to go bigger. And above the family motto is another sculpture, a mysterious A crowned. And Josselin, this A that we see at the top of the facade, is a tribute to Anne de Bretagne, is that right? Yes, because Anne de Bretagne was both the niece of the owner of the castle, Jean d'Eudrohan, but it was the Duchess of Brittany, so the Sovereign of Brittany. And Jean d'Eudrohan wanted to both pay tribute to his Sovereign, but also to recall his family proximity to her. He wanted to be pampered. Well, in any case, he wanted to show that he had influence and that he was close to the Duchess, who was also the Queen of France at the time. But before being an architectural gem, this castle was first a stronghold destined to resist a possible invader. And who says stronghold, naturally says underground. It is an underground that allowed the garrison to flee when there was a siege. It's pretty hostile, isn't it? No, it was actually quite comfortable. On the contrary, the underground is almost fifty meters long. And where does this underground lead us? At the edge of the river. That's it, Josselin, we've gone back in time. We are at the bottom of the underground. Now is the time for you to tell us a little about the medieval history of your castle. Are you ready? Let's go. Here we are, in front of this isolated tower. This isolated tower, which at first was not isolated, because there were six like it. It became isolated definitively in the 18th century when the two towers that were next to it were demolished because they threatened the safety of the inhabitants. In the beginning, in the year 1008, a Breton warrior decided to build a wooden structure His name, Gosselinus, will later become that of the Hamo voisin. But the castle as we know it today, it is to this man, Olivier de Clisson, Chief of the Royal Armies, that we owe it. He orders the construction in 1370. What happened before? That is to say that De Clisson decides to build these six towers, it is he above all who decides to truly enlarge this castle. It was Olivier de Clisson who literally rebuilt it and who gave it its current form, which was an extraordinary power for a fortress in Brittany. But the kings of France did not finish with the Roans. The religious wars that oppose Catholics and Protestants are a new opportunity to weaken the family by amputating part of its power, and it is Henri de Roan who pays the price. In 1629, the owner of the castle of Gosselin, Duke Henri de Roan, was at the head of the Protestant armies in the last religious war between Catholics and Protestants. And while they were at war in the South-West, Richelieu seized Gosselin and had it demolished. It is because they are Calvinists convinced that Richelieu will turn against them like that. Because Richelieu did not want the Roans to exert an influence in Brittany because of their religion, and above all he did not want them to have a stronghold from which they could have built this influence. At the enthronement of Cardinal Richelieu, the destructive fugue of the revolutionaries follows. During the revolution, this tower will have a completely different vocation. It's a kind of prison in fact. It will serve as a prison where the revolutionaries will intern all those who are their enemies, or at least who they consider as such. So there are the decidevants, as we said, these members of the nobility, but also people in much more modest conditions who they consider to be counter-revolutionaries, and then also priests. And they are interned in absolutely deplorable conditions of hygiene. In this castle, each century carries its share of struggles and resistance. On this last point, the 20th was an ordeal whose memory Gosselin still has. And here we are, Gosselin, in front of the famous staircase. This staircase has a particularly extraordinary history during the Second World War, when Gosselin was occupied. Yes, it was the demarcation line between the part that was still reserved for us, we were 11 children and 5 adults, and the part occupied by the German General Staff. Here your family, here the Nazis. Here the Germans. You show us? Here. How does cohabitation happen? It happened in a more or less reasonable way, until the end, when the Germans were even very nervous, because there was a lot of clinging to the resistance, and I think they had quite bad intentions about the fate of the castle. So it was time for it to stop. And then there was even an infiltrated resistance here in Josmin, and it turns out that it was your father. Yes, he was indeed an adjutant of the commander of the French forces inside the FFI, in the region of Joslin. He made raids between the castle and the outside, where he trained the Maquisards, or gunmen. But he was playing a dangerous game. The Nazis were right next door. Yes, he was playing a dangerous game, because they ended up having suspicions about him, and so it was time for liberation to intervene, because it could have gone wrong. Resistance is a question of survival among the Rois. Political, religious resistance, but also resistance to the wear and tear of time, which altered the foundations of the castle. In 1799, after the revolution, the fortress, confiscated by the sans-culottes, was returned to the Rois in a pitiful state. It was in 1870 that the family undertook a restoration that would last more than 40 years. And to tell us about it, I join Antoinette, Joslin's wife. Pauline, you are welcomed here in majesty by Olivier de Clisson. The famous. The famous, who built the fortress, and who was represented here by a great sculptor of the time. Antoinette, this piece is the perfect example of this time of restoration of Joslin's castle. Yes, it is a very homogeneous example, very beautiful and very successful, of a restoration that was done very precisely between 1889 and 1892, since we recently found some invoices in our archives. It's a real family portrait, this piece. There is the first name of Alain, of course, but also of his wife and all his children. Absolutely. So Alain wanted to have all the first names of his family of his mother, Octavie, of his father, Joslin, and also of his children, with Jean, there was Françoise, Marie, so all of them are here. He had five children. This room is 160 square metres. Yes, it's not hot. Come, I invite you to have some tea. Thank you, Antoinette. So this is where it happens. It's a real secret passage. There are many secret passages in the castle. Antoinette, how in two words could you describe this house, this castle, the spirit of your family? What would it be? Resistance? Yes, it's a form of resistance to the disappearance of a number of things, but I'm not someone who wants to stay engulfed in tradition. I don't want this castle to become, for us and for the next generation, a kind of too heavy lead that locks us completely in the past. And this is where there is a challenge to be taken up. And here, to continue means to keep the soul of the monument. If we leave tomorrow, if the places are empty, I think that this monument will no longer have the same soul as it does today. And this soul, Antoinette, Jocelyn and their ancestors before them, have distilled it a little everywhere here, down to the keys of this piano on which their great-grandfather played. Now, I know that under this stone screen a story is always told, a millennial tale whose charm has not finished operating. A beautiful private visit of Jocelyn's castle at the Rouen. I like that at the Rouen they also had another motto ''King does not run, Prince does not deserve, Rouen follows''. They are between the two. Since the origins, since they founded their first nucleus in the forest of Quenecan at the extreme limit of the North Morbihan, they have this way of affirming themselves prodigiously independent and resistant. That is to say, we feel that it is a house of resistance. Absolutely, but at all times. The symbol, the acme of this resistance is obviously this encroachment of Richelieu against Henri de Rouen. But why didn't he destroy it entirely? Precisely, Stéphane, the castle was saved by the Prince of Condé. That is to say that Richelieu ended up accepting to give this castle to the Prince of Condé who, seeing this wonder, decided to spare it and to stop all this machination. We can say that it is the most beautiful castle in Brittany. It is the most beautiful castle in Brittany, of course. It is really a jewel. I think it is the place in Brittany that attracts a lot of visitors. More than 40,000 visitors per year. It is monstrous. It is a lot for an isolated castle like this. It is what keeps such a house afloat. To go to Jocelyn, it is not easy. Precisely. It is not so far from the motorway to start. And then, it is the inner Brittany. It is sometimes a repeat in summer compared to the beach. And this story also means something else. It is the beauty of this capacity to triumph over the most perverse minds. And it feels good. I find it incredible that this house, which in a thousand years of history has known everything. We wanted to destroy it. We rebuilt it. And this family hangs on these old stones with a real passion. With a real soul. Of course, to preserve their intimacy, we did not show it. But the family pictures are everywhere. This modern kitchen next to this medieval basement. This modest kitchen in the middle of the castle. The fireplace can be bigger than all the kitchen furniture. And Jocelyn lives there. Above, they have their apartment. They sleep there. It is not a museum. That is why visitors find that there is a soul. But for three centuries, they deserted it. Unfortunately, we cannot say that they left it or deserted it. It is that fate was cruel and they were banished from this place. This castle was reused during the Seven Years' War to imprison the English. Then, during the Revolution, the Isolated Tower sheltered the 112 prisoners who lived there. It is a place that was requisitioned systematically during the wars and during the clashes. They could not enjoy it for a long time. It is still a place full of history. Do you visit it often? Yes, very often. What always strikes me when I come to Jocelyn is the initial rock on the river. This is Brittany. Whatever happens, you have this rock that holds on. It resists the storms. It resists. There is something characteristic in Brittany. We know how to hold on and we hold on. If I may, Irene, you also have a certain fragility just like in Jocelyn's castle which is on this very narrow rock and which is extremely fragile, 70 meters high. Our enemies are ultimately our best teachers. I love it. Hold on and hold on. We should meditate on it more often. Just like in Menhir. They did not all hold on. No, but we are still here. Apart from Menhir, in Karnak, we do not sleep in Brittany. We do not like it very much. It depends on the time. There are ways to sleep that can be enjoyable and that we appreciate a lot.