3-038-954 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Chateau d'Arques, near Dieppe, [France], 1871. 'Henry IV. ought to have been beaten, said Napoleon, as he looked down from the Chateau d'Arques and took in at a glance the scene which that valley had witnessed some two centuries before his time...This Chateau d'Arques is incomparably the most interesting object in the neighbourhood of Dieppe; and especially so to an Englishman, for it was built by an uncle of William the Conqueror, by whom it was subsequently occupied, and passed successively into the hands of Robert of Normandy, Henry I., Stephen, and Geoffrey Plantagenet...But all its Royal occupants could not save it from the ravages of war and time...it became at last a mere quarry, from which the inhabitants of the neighbouring village carted off the materials whenever they required them, until Republican France sold the remains for a small sum, leaving it to the Empire, in 1859, to purchase back the ruin and preserve it as a national monument. Not only is the castle itself, with all its historic associations, most interesting, but the view of the Forest of Arques and of the charming Norman valley, through which flow the mingled waters of the Bethune and the Arques, is most attractive and picturesque'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.