A mutilated castle

Above the river, the high residence of Choiseul-La Baume was razed during the Revolution. Since then, it has been the “absent castle”, of which not even an image remains… But around this void, the city walls remain decorated with a group of evocative buildings. Exhibitions enliven their vaulted rooms. The creative rehabilitation of the school by architect B. Quirot was praised by the Heritage Foundation. From the terrace, the view extends towards the countryside, the first forests of the Jura and, in the evening on a clear day, as far as Mont Blanc, all pink with snow.

From the side of the village, behind its gate, this piece of castle looks like a large notable residence; on the river side, on the other hand, its sheer drop above the bridge and its powerful volumes always intrigue travelers arriving by the southern route at first glance.

Once Louis Previously, the history of this castle site was intertwined with that of the castle town of Pesmes, of which it was the high armored retreat, flanked by a keep.

During the Gallo-Roman era, dwellings were scattered around, near the banks of the watercourse and the roads below. A thousand years later, a rocky outcrop having been chosen by the first feudal lords as suitable for the needs of fortification, the village was (re)born from this choice, apparently in the 11th century, but undoubtedly well before.
Although pesmes, in Old French, means “very bad” or “fierce”, the origin of this toponymy without any other example is uncertain. Guillaume de Pesmes baptized the place in this way (or vice versa?) before 1122. One of his successors at the castle was suffocated between two feather pillows, proof that these lords knew how to die by violence, even in a bed. Their stronghold has a dozen villages.

After the Pesmes, the lords of Grandson (masters of a fortified castle still preserved intact on the shores of Lake Neufchâtel, undoubtedly similar to what ours was) are rich lords; but the commune obtains franchises, and through this, already separates itself from the castle.

From the 14th century, several times besieged, reworked, burned, rebuilt, recaptured, prey to local but also territorial disputes involving the houses of Burgundy, France, Austria and Spain, the residence-fortress of Pesmes, and especially the town which surrounds it like an additional rampart, pays a heavy price in devastation – less than the unfortunate town of Dôle, however. It was most often French troops who besieged, pillaged and dismantled it. Of these alternating fortunes, we have of course preserved anecdotes, on the respective stays of Louis but it has recently been updated, not far from a cistern already mentioned in the plan of the fortifications at the time of Turenne, more telling remains: a much older walled chimney, a loophole with its stone watchtower. , a latrine in a projecting buttress, and, jumbled among the leveled rubble from a fire, a cannonball, a Geneva silver coin from 1572, a two-pronged fork, a hairpin, a skull cat from the 16th century… fragments of stained glass, etc. It should be noted here that the lovely view of the meanders of the Ognon and the distant shoulders of the Jura forest was half indifferent to the lords of the past, because in the 18th century the windows here were furnished with gilded Bohemian glass.

It is still possible today to try to imagine, at the top of the village of Pesmes, the beautiful ensemble, with front gate, concierge, avenue of lime trees, performance hall, stables, garden terraces, large staircase towards the river , chapel, paneling and amassed collections, which the Marquises of La Baume-Montrevel had brought to the highest standard in the middle of the 18th century. However, through a very strange twist of fate, we do not know of a single representation of the castle which predates its partial destruction. Passed to the Choiseul-Stainvilles, who only came to reside there during the grape harvest, fifteen days a year, this vast residence combining comfort, patrician splendor and reason, but became like an enclave in the village, still endowed with strong feudal rents (mill, brick kiln, etc.), the object of latent resentment, was on the verge of being irreparably mutilated. The fiefdom was unfortunately established as a duchy-peerage in favor of the adopted nephew of the former brilliant minister of Louis XV who died riddled with debt in 1785. Pesmes almost had to be called Choiseul: there was an outcry. It was in 1787: seven years later, even the fireplaces, piers, doors and Versailles parquet floors of the “grand pavilion” were sold off. It was then sold stone by stone, under the Directory, by a materials merchant, until a departmental decree prohibited him from continuing its demolition.

Buildings and land were divided up: the conciergerie, current headquarters of the Community of Communes of Val de Pesmes, was a hotel bearing the sign of the “Golden Eagle” (the little lieutenant Bonaparte, in garrison at Auxonne, having spent a few Sundays in Pesmes); the small theater was annexed to the school, the stables became a gendarmerie then a community and association house. The beautiful stage frame of the theater, in gilded wood decorated with stems, flower buds and bird necks, was transplanted into a room of the remaining castle, where the simple wood-panelled living room was once the antechamber of the Chapel.

This current “castle”, little altered and rather impoverished in the 19th century, is therefore the wing of the old large pavilion which succumbed to revolutionary auctions and pickaxes. The rock-walled building is, in its depths, what it has been since the year 1000, in the heart of the often disputed place of Pesmes: a small steep fort, controlling the passage of the Ognon, and still remains today a somewhat strange, due to its little-known history, its jagged, ruiniform appearance, both massive and attractive.

After having been the home of notables for more than a century, the house was, in 1950, for sale, buried in the trees and almost abandoned. A descendant of several allied Pesmois families (Mayrot, d’Andelot, Aubert de Résie) was able to acquire it to create a simple holiday home, with tiled and whitewashed rooms for large families, cousins ​​and groups of friends of this post-war period so optimistic and unpretentious.

The large vaulted room

Dégagée et réouverte en 1966, cette salle de pierre à la Vauban, avec ses piliers trapus et élancés, tenait lieu de vide sanitaire ou de soutènement aux salons dorés du château central, désormais absent. La salle paraît d’un assez respectable travail au regard de cette destination initiale -à moins de supposer qu’elle ait antérieurement servi de magasin d’armes ou de salle à soldats. Le rocher affleure à ses extrémités. Les démolisseurs du grand pavillon, vers 1796, s’en étaient servis pour déverser des tonnes de gravas. Les voûtes n’ont subi, en guise de restauration, qu’un coup de brosse il y a 50 ans. Les deux piliers supportent le poids de 200 m³ de terre de la terrasse supérieure ; ainsi naturellement « géothermique », la pièce de 180 m² conserve sans chauffage une température douce jusqu’au mois de décembre. Le dallage polychrome central, en pierre de la région (pierre rouge de Sampans notamment), date du 17ème siècle.Au fil des années, les voûtes de cette salle ont accueilli une variété de concerts pour un public amateur : pièces de clavecin, de Bach à Ligeti, guitare de Villa-Lobos, quatuors de Beethoven et Schubert, Quintette avec clarinette op. 115 de Brahms, Introduction et allegro pour harpe de Ravel, etc. Elle a également abrité des expositions de toutes sortes, d’outils anciens de la collection Jean Degoutin, de tapisseries contemporaines, de sculptures de Morice Lipsi, la plus mémorable étant sans doute celle de grandes toiles de Paul Rebeyrolle, en 1989, grâce au Fonds régional d’art contemporain.