T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 232

white square towers are only used on very rare occasions: There are a few in the walls of Provins, a medley of every shape of tower conceivable : round, pointed, square, and re-en trant towers jostle one another in 300 yards of wall. The architect, whoever he was, was trying experiments. Crusacl in the Rhone valley opposite Valence is the only castle of France presenting many Greek features. The gate (70) is quite Byzantine, and any curtain towers there may be are square :(71) but the walls are so thin that a chemin de ronde had to be carried on the butt-ends of the rests for the hoards, and the whole place was evidently trivial. The donjon was square, and reasonably solid ; the other walls were only to enclose a village. The place does not resemble in the least anything European. There is therefore no ... in all this for any borrow- ings from Constantinople or the Templars in French architec- ture down to Chateau Gaillard. This unfortunate place is always quoted as an example of the influence of the Crusades on mediaeval castle-building ; the opportunity of strengthen- ing the statement possible in Richard's visit to the East is too good to be missed. On the other hand quite certainly there is nothing like Chateau Gaillard in the East. "Un des plus bians chastians en terre, et des plus fors" as Guillaume Guiart describes it, it is nevertheless (or therefore) Northern.