12th–14th century – Louis VII to Saint Louis The first royal residence was created by an act of
Louis VII in 1178. The site had the advantages of good hunting in the surrounding forest, proximity to two former Roman roads to
Sens and to
Lagny, as well as access by water on the
Marne and
Seine rivers. It was used only occasionally by Louis VII and his successors, but
Louis IX, or Saint Louis (1226–1270), used it much more often, second only to his time at the
Palais de la Cité in Paris. He held meetings of the royal council there, and Queen
Margaret of Provence and his children often resided there when he was absent from Paris. When Louis IX purchased the reputed
Crown of Thorns from the Emperor
Baldwin of Constantinople, Louis received the celebrated relic at
Sens Cathedral, escorted it to Vincennes, and then accompanied it to its eventual home in the
Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. A few thorns from the crown of thorns and a small fragment of the reputed True Cross were deposited at Vincennes for placement in a future chapel. Louis IX said farewell to his family at Vincennes before his departure to the
Crusades, from which he did not return. at Château de
Vincennes The château was frequented by the Kings and their families.
Philip III (in 1274) and
Philip IV (in 1284) were each married there and three 14th-century kings died at Vincennes:
Louis X (1316),
Philip V (1322) and
Charles IV (1328). The residence at the time was a sprawling manor with four wings located in the northeast corner of the present château walls, begun in the late 13th century. It was transferred to the clergy of the Saint-Chapelle after the Keep was completed; vestiges were found during excavations in 1992–1996.
14th century – Fortress of Jean II and Charles V The defeats of the French and the capture of the King by the English in the
Hundred Years’ War, as well as uprisings of the Parisian merchants under
Etienne Marcel (1357–58) and a rural upraising against the crown, the
Jacquerie (1360), persuaded the new French king,
John II and his son, the future
Charles V, that they needed a more secure residence close to, but not in the center of Paris. The King ordered the construction of a fortress at Vincennes with high walls and towers surrounding a massive
keep or central tower, 52 meters (172 feet) high. The work was started in about 1337, and by 1364 the three lower levels of the keep were finished. Charles V moved into the keep in 1367 or 1368, while construction was still underway. When it was completed in 1369–70, it was the tallest fortified structure in Europe. The digging of the deep
moat came next (1367), then the fortified gateway (1369). The walls and towers surrounding the keep were finished in 1371–72. Charles V had even greater ambitions for the château. At the end of 1372, he began construction of another wall, a large square more than a kilometre () in length, with towers, to contain the additional buildings he intended to build. This was constructed between 1372 and 1385. The outer wall was given further reinforcement with the construction of a deep moat. The last project begun by Charles the V was laying the foundations of the
Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes to hold a set of sacred relics obtained by
Louis IX, but he died in 1380 in the Manoir de Beauté, a separate residence he had constructed in 1376–1377 southeast of Vincennes, when the work on the new Sainte-Chapelle had just begun.
Late 14th – Late 15th century – Wars of Religion – Royal fortress and refuge – La Sainte Chapelle File:Limbourg brothers - Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry - December (detail) - WGA13030.jpg|The château behind a boar hunt, by
Limbourg Brothers or
Barthélemy d'Eyck (1412–1416) File:Jean Fouquet - Job and his False Comforters - WGA08033.jpg|The château by
Jean Fouquet (1455) File:Château de Vincennes sous Charles V par Pierre Nicolas Ransonette.jpg|The château of
Charles V by Pierre Nicolas Ransonette (18th c. engraving), before the truncation of the perimeter towers In the turbulent 15th century, the château became a refuge for the kings of France. It was the regular residence of
Charles VI of France up until his madness, then was disputed by the two rivals of his succession,
Philip the Good of Burgundy and
Louis I, Duke of Orléans. In 1415 the knights of
Henry V of England defeated the French at the
Battle of Agincourt. The
Treaty of Troyes in 1420 granted the château and the
Île-de-France to the English. Henry V of England installed his troops there, repaired the château, and died there of
dysentery in 1422, aged 35. An alliance between the Burgundians with
Charles VII of France finally allowed the King to force the English out of the Île-de-France and to reoccupy the château. He and his successors rarely lived there, preferring the
Loire Valley. His successor,
Louis XI, also spent most of his time in the Loire Valley, but he made one major modification to Vincennes: He constructed a new royal residence within the walls, the first outside of the keep. It extended the entire length of the southeast wall. The Sainte-Chapelle of Vincennes, begun in 1379, was still unfinished in the 16th century. In 1520 King
Francis I, a frequent resident, resolved to complete it to celebrate the birth of his son and heir. After his death in 1547,
Henry II of France took up the work, finishing the vaults, and adding the woodwork and especially the stained glass. It was completed in 1552.
17th and early 18th century – new royal residences In the early 17th century,
Marie De' Medici, the widow of the assassinated
Henry IV of France, began a major project to replace the old pavilion of Louis XI and
Francis I. Her son
Louis XIII, then age ten, laid the first stone of the new residence in 1610.
Louis XIV continued the program on an even larger scale; planned by the royal architect
Louis Le Vau. His new residence in the French classical style, now the Bâtiment du Roi, was finished in 1658, and was twice the size of the Louis XIII residence. In 1688, work began on a new pavilion of the Queen, on the north side of the enclosure. A new formal garden with an orangerie, was built on the west side. A large group of painters and sculptors was assembled to decorate the new buildings. The ensemble was completed with a triumphal arch at the entrance, and was dedicated in August 1660, in time for the return of the King and his new bride to Paris. But the age of royal glory at Vincennes was brief; in 1682 Louis XIV moved the royal court to his residence at Versailles, and in 1715
Louis XV began his reign in Versailles. While the boy king was taken by the Regent
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans to the château for several months in 1715 to keep him safe from conspiracies, and the King subsequently went hunting occasionally at Vincennes, the full Court did not return.
18th – early 19th century – Manufactory, prison, fortress File:Sturm auf den Donjon.png|Storming of the keep by Revolutionaries (1791) File:Vincennes engraving by William Miller after Turner R531.jpg|The execution of the
Duc d'Enghien in 1804 by William Miller after
J. M. W. Turner File:VincennesWatercolor.jpg|Anonymous watercolour of the moat. The weeping willow marks the spot where the Duc d'Enghien was executed. File:Le général Daumesnil refuse de livrer Vincennes (huile de Gaston Mélingue, 1882).jpg|General
Pierre Daumesnil: "I shall surrender Vincennes when I get my leg back."|alt=General Pierre Daumesnil : "I shall surrender Vincennes when I get my leg back." Following the royal departure in the early 18th century, an effort was made to turn the château into a sort of pre-industrial park; the
royal porcelain manufactory was opened in the Devil's Tower in 1740, but moved to a larger space in
Sèvres in 1756. It was home for a time of an armaments factory, then an industrial bakery. It was used occasionally for horse races from 1777 until 1784. In 1787 the King put most of the buildings up for sale, but the sale was interrupted by the
French Revolution. The château took on a new role as a military base and prison. Long before the French Revolution, notable prisoners had been held at the château. Early prisoners included the future King
Henry IV in 1574,
Henri II, Prince of Condé;
Nicolas Fouquet, the
Superintendent of Finances of Louis XIV (September 1661); and the writer
Denis Diderot. In 1680 Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin or
La Voisin was one of more famous poisoners imprisoned and interrogated at the château during the
Affair of the Poisons. The
Marquis de Sade was held there from 1777 to 1784, the writer
Honoré Mirabeau from 1777 to 1784, and the famous swindler
Jean Henri Latude, who escaped twice from the Vincennes and once from the
Bastille. In 1784, after Mirabeau wrote a series of articles which exposed the abuses of the royal judicial system and the practice of keeping prisoners without trial, the use of the keep as a prison was discontinued. At the end of February 1791, a mob of more than a thousand workers from the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine, encouraged by members of the
Cordeliers Club and led by
Antoine Joseph Santerre, marched out to the château, which, rumour had it, was being readied on the part of the Crown for political prisoners, and with crowbars and pickaxes set about demolishing it, as the
Bastille had recently been demolished. The work was interrupted by the
Marquis de Lafayette who took several ringleaders prisoners, to the jeers of the Parisian workers. Following the French Revolution, the château was denounced as a symbol of oppression, but then was used again by
Napoleon I to hold prisoners transferred from the
Temple Prison in Paris, Napoleon demolished the Temple prison to prevent it from becoming a royalist shrine to
Marie Antoinette, who had been held there. Two historical items from the Temple Prison are displayed at Vincennes; an armoured prison cell door, and a stove of ceramic tiles which had originally been in the cell of Marie Antoinette. During the reign of Napoleon, the château and its buildings underwent considerable reconstruction to serve as a military arsenal. A new wooden floor divided the Sainte-Chapelle into upper and lower levels, and it was turned into a storehouse for munitions. The Pavilion of the King and the Pavilion of the Queen became barracks for the garrison. Most of the towers of the surrounding wall, which were in a poor state of repair, were demolished, with the exception of the Tower of the Village, which still has its original height, and the Tower of the Woods, which had collapsed earlier. The moat of the château was also the site of a famous execution, that of
Duc d'Enghien, which took place on 21 March 1804. He was accused of trying the reinstate the royal government. A willow tree in the moat was planted to mark the place he was executed, and is still there today. In 1814, after Napoleon's
defeat in Russia, as the allied armies of the
Sixth Coalition approached Paris, the château was commanded by General
Pierre Daumesnil. Daumesnil had a wooden leg, replacing a limb he lost at the
Battle of Wagram (5–6 July 1809). When the allies demanded his surrender, Daumenil responded, "I shall surrender Vincennes when I get my leg back". He finally agreed to give up the fortress only when ordered to do by the newly restored king,
Louis XVIII.
Late 19th – military base and public park During the
Restoration and the
July Monarchy, in the first half of the 19th century, the château and park were used by the military, particularly the artillery; an artillery school was opened there in 1826. The surrounding park was used for military exercises and as a firing range. In the first part of the 19th century three separate forts were constructed within the park to serve as part of the defences of the city. In the mid-century, the separate forts were connected together into one very large military complex. The buildings of the château itself and its surroundings were the park as part of the new fortifications of the city. Some parts of the medieval complexes were modified to fit into the new defensive plan. Under
Napoleon III, the
Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes was declared an historical landmark, and in 1854 restoration of the chapel was begun by
Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. The keep of the château was given landmark status in 1913, though restoration did not begin until after the
First World War. Beginning just before 1860, Napoleon III also began to develop an extensive new public park to the southeast of Paris, the
Bois de Vincennes, modelled after the
Bois de Boulogne he had begun on the other side of the city. The territory of the Bois de Vincennes, with the exception of the military bases, was ceded to the City of Paris on 24 July 1860, and became part of the
12th arrondissement of Paris. On March 20, 1871, two days after the
Paris Commune seized power in the city, Commune soldiers came to the château and fraternised with the regular army soldiers. The château surrendered to the Commune without a fight. A few weeks later, on 27 May, after the regular
French Army had recaptured Paris from the Commune, the château was the last holdout where the red flag still flew. A colonel of the regular army arrived and negotiated the surrender of the remaining Communards. The soldiers left peacefully, while some of the officers who had joined the Commune were arrested, tried and shot in the moat of the château. A plaque on the wall of the moat marks the place.
20th century – Command post During the First World War, the Dutch-born German spy
Mata Hari was executed by a firing squad on October 15, 1917, in the moat of the château. The restoration of the château was halted in 1936 by concerns about the rising threat from
Nazi Germany. Beginning in that year, a large underground bunker was dug beneath the Pavilion of the Queen in the southeast corner, to serve as the headquarters of the chief of staff. The generals
Maurice Gamelin and then
Maxime Weygand directed the
defense of France from there, until they were overwhelmed by the German
Blitzkrieg.
France surrendered on June 14, 1940. The Germans then used it as a base for their own soldiers, as well as a prison where
French Resistance members were held. One of the first members of the French Resistance,
Jacques Bonsergent, was tried and executed there on November 10, 1940. On 20 August 1944, during the battle for the
Liberation of Paris, 26 policemen and members of the Resistance arrested by soldiers of the
Waffen-SS were executed in the eastern moat of the fortress, and their bodies thrown in a common grave. On the evening of August 24, 1944, the same day that the
2nd Armoured Division of
General Leclerc reached the centre of Paris, the German forces occupying the château set off explosives in the three storage areas of munitions, badly damaging the Pavilions of the King and Queen and opening a gap in the wall between the entry pavilion and tower of Paris, before they withdrew. The next day the
4th U.S Infantry Division reached the château and the eastern neighbourhoods of Paris. In 1948 the château became the headquarters of France's
Defence Historical Service, which maintains a museum in the keep. A major campaign began in 1986 to preserve and restore the architectural heritage of the château. ==Plan and description==