page_title: Château de La Ferté-Imbault
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Château de La Ferté-Imbault / History
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Le château, les pavillons, les communs, et la ferme.
context_page_description: The Château de La Ferté-Imbault is a stately home in the Loire Valley, France. A fortress in the Middle Ages and rebuilt in the Renaissance, it is the largest brick château in Sologne, and one of the oldest. It was the family seat of the House of d'Estampes for four centuries.
  The seigneurie of La Ferte-Imbault was the most important of the south of Sologne, and whose jurisdiction included the parishes of Salbris, Saint-Genou, Marcilly, Loreux and Souesmes. It comprised more than one hundred farms spread over thousands of hectares, stretching from Loreux to Souesmes and from Saint-Viâtre to the limits of Theillay.
  The château is a "rectangular building, with large windows and flanked by four towers of massifs and alleys of trees, an air of grandeur and poetry that strikes, everything at the same time, the heart and the imagination". Its position "is quite pleasant and joyful, in a place where the Sauldre is divided into several channels ... The red turrets of the château expand amid these waters and this greenery, and crown wonderfully the rich picture".
context_section_description: A Roman occupation was found on the site of the present château.
  A first fortress was built around 980 by Humbold (or Humbault) Le Tortu, Seigneur de Vierzon and son-in-law of Thibault, comte de Blois. The proximity of the Sauldre feeds the moat. The bases of the two main towers remain to this day as the old weapons room. Hervé 1st, Seigneur de Vierzon and descendant of Humbold, had built on his return from the crusade, a collegiate in honor of Saint-Taurin. This ecclesiastical presence and the need to supply the fortress favor the emergence of the village of La Ferté-Imbault which is built around. In 1280 Jeanne de Vierzon, heiress of the lands of La Ferté-Imbault, weds Geoffroy de Brabant, comte d'Aerschot, son of duc Henry III de Brabant and Adelaide de Bourgogne (Burgundy). Geoffroy de Brabant was the brother-in-law of the King of France, Philip III the Bold. His daughter, Alix de Brabant, married Jean III d'Harcourt in 1302. His marriage to Alix de Brabant, a rich heiress who brought him the seigneurie of La Ferté-Imbault, made him a close relative of the Duke of Brabant and the Kings of France, because Alix is also the niece of the Queen of France, Marie de Brabant.
  The son of Jean III d'Harcourt and Alix de Brabant, Jean IV, first comte d'Harcourt, marries Isabeau de Parthenay. Their sons Guillaume d'Harcourt is the seigneur of La Ferté-Imbault. From his marriage to Blanche de Bray, Dame de Cernon, they had one daughter, Jeanne d'Harcourt, Dame de La Ferte-Imbault, who married Hugues de Montmorency. Their sons, Louis and Antoine, died at the Battle of Azincourt in 1415 for the first, and Verneuil in 1424 for the second. Their sister, Catherine de Montmorency, inherits the vast estate of La Ferté-Imbault after the death of her two brothers.
  During the Hundred Years War, the castle was taken and destroyed by the troops of Edward the Black Prince, as well as the village. After having belonged without interruption during several centuries to the dynasty of Humbold Le Tortu, Seigneur of Vierzon, by the alliance of the families of Brabant, Harcourt and Montmorency, the estate is sold by Catherine de Montmorency to Robert II d'Estampes, Seigneur de Valençay, in 1424.
  Joan of Arc stayed at La Ferté-Imbault on March 4, 1429.
  The castle was rebuilt during the Renaissance. The royal power was nearby, in Blois, and Francis I of France came from Romorantin neighboring the land of La Ferté-Imbault.
  Partially destroyed by a fire during the Wars of Religion in 1562, the castle was rebuilt and enlarged by the addition of two wings and large commons in the early seventeenth century by Jacques d'Estampes, marquis de Mauny, who was the richest landlord of the region, and the grandson of Guillaume de Hautemer, the duc de Grancey of France, better known under the name of marshal de Fervaques (Stendhal used this name for one of the characters of Le rouge et le noir (The Red and the Black), the maréchale de Fervaques). Jacques d'Estampes, head of the House of d'Estampes, was also be the first marquis of La Ferté-Imbault. His eldest son was Seigneur de Salbris. Born in the reign of Henry IV, the marquis de La Ferté-Imbault died in the reign of Louis XIV, after fighting alongside Louis XIII (whose bust still adorns the former guardhouse of the château). He was ambassador to England (1641-1643), lieutenant-general of Orléanais, Vendômois and Dunois (1645), and marshal of France (1651). Louis XIV made him knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit (1661). His friendship with HRH Gaston of France, Duc d'Orléans and brother of Louis XIII (Monsieur, the King's brother), was flawless throughout his life, and it is as a lieutenant of the company of the Gendarmes of the Duc d 'Orléans (in 1620) that he had huge commons built at the Château de La Ferté-Imbault to accommodate his company. His wife, Catherine-Blanche of Choiseul (whose godfathers are the Grand Sully and the Prince de Rohan), whose father is Charles de Choiseul, marquis de Praslin, advisor to Marie de Medici and one of the most remarkable men of the end of the sixteenth century), will be 
caption: The château, the pavilions, the common and the farm.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Instagram", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "136", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[51, 30, 917/50]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[0, 0, 262/5]", "GPS GPSAltitude": "3997/1285", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[9, 14, 921/50]", "GPS GPSDOP": "65", "GPS GPSDate": "2016:10:26", "Image GPSInfo": "288", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "584", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10854", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:10:25 23:20:29", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "750", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "750", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}