Villebois Castle is located in Charente in the French commune of Villebois-Lavalette. The fortified hill of Villebois is dominated by the ruins of a feudal castle and a wing of an imposing 17th century building. It belonged to Jean-Louis Nogaret de La Valette, Duke of Épernon and Governor of Angoumois.
Historical
The spur position of the castle platform on a hillock, near the boundary between Angoumois and Périgord, dominating Chemin Boisné, an ancient road between Saintes and Périgueux, meant that the site was very early on an important stronghold for the defense of the surroundings.
In the 8th century, the Fulchers of Villebois were its lords. Then in 959, it was the Helies. In 1120 the castle was taken by Vulgrin II Taillefer, Count of Angoulême, and in 1143 it passed to the Ithiers de Villebois, who built the two-storey Romanesque chapel.
The line died out in 1204 with Amélie de Cognac, married to a Philippe de Cognac, illegitimate son of Richard I. The Villebois estates then passed to Jean-Sans-Terre, then to Jean-Sans-Terre's wife, Isabelle d'Angoulême. His remarriage transferred the seigneuries of the Cognacs and the castle to the Lusignans, counts of Angoulême, who raised their seven semi-circular flanking towers and enlarged the chapel.
In 1355, Raymond de Mareuil, knight, lord of Mareuil and Bourzac, received from King Jean le Bon the lordship of Villebois after the extinction of the Lusignan line. The lords of Mareuil are then among the successive owners of the castle.
During the Hundred Years War, the English held a garrison there. In 1360, during the Treaty of Brétigny retroceding Angoumois to English Guyenne, the English entrusted the custody of the castle to its owner, Raymond de Mareuil. In 1376, Villebois was taken back from the English by the Duke of Berry, brother of Charles V.
Guy de Mareuil, baron de Mareuil and de Villebois, seigneur of Bourzac, Angeac, Vibrac, Montmoreau and Pranzac, was seneschal of Angoumois. Died in 1519, he is buried in the chapel of the convent of the Augustins which he had founded in Villebois.
In 1541, the château returned with the incredible marriage of his daughter, Gabrielle de Mareuil, to Nicolas d'Anjou, Marquis de Mézières en Berry. In 1556, Renée d'Anjou-Mézières married the very Catholic François de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier, and brought him as a dowry her lands of Vibrac, Villebois and Mareuil.
During the Wars of Religion Villebois will be largely destroyed. Indeed, between 1568 and 1569, the castle was taken and taken over by Catholics and Protestants. In 1590, Jean-Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, Duke of Épernon and governor of Angoumois from 1588, laid siege to the castle where members of the League, headed by a certain Maumont, appointed by the "knight d' Aubeterre”, David Bouchard, had entrenched themselves. He broke through the wall with intense cannon fire, and hanged eighteen leaguers.
A few years later, in 1596, the Duke of Épernon acquired from its owner, the Marquise de Mézières, the land of Villebois as a fief and had it set up, in 1622 by letters patent, the marquisate as a duchy and peerage of Lavalette, d 'where the current name of Villebois-Lavalette. The castle became the Duke's main secondary residence, after Angoulême.
