La Cassine en Ardenne© – Le Couvent des Cordeliers

In 1572, 6 years after their marriage, Louis de Gonzagues and Henriette de Clèves built one of the most beautiful Renaissance castles in France on this site. 

This castle will be fortified thanks to an enclosure of 18000 m2 bordered by vast ditches filled with water. A fortified site to face, isolated in the middle of nature, the principality of Sedan, neighboring, armed and Protestant.

THE CORDELIERS CONVENT
Between unity and change, the Convent of the Cordeliers was built from 1579 to 1587. It was then held by 6 priests and 6 deacons who were granted 5 acres of land, 32 acres of wood and a muid of wheat. 

The convent was built “one cannon volley” from the castle. During the revolution, this convent was secularized and became a farm. Its simple architecture and the (mendicant) order for which this convent is intended make it a place with an austere atmosphere. It has a cardinal orientation around a cloister of which some fragments of columns were found but whose courtyard remains missing.
Choice seats were reserved for the Duc de Rethel or Henriette de Clèves. The facades of the walls of the monks' dormitories still show traces of the arms of the Gonzagues, in particular the motto (Fides), the rose (fleuron des Gonzagues), the H of Henriette and the Lambda of Louis as well as the stripped and crossed branches: emblem of the Counts of Rethel.