Château de Châlus-Chabrol

From the early Middle Ages the Monts de Châlus formed a border march — first between the counts of Périgord and the viscounts of Limoges, later between the Plantagenet duchy of Aquitaine and lands held directly of the French crown. That frontier explains a chain of fifteen fortresses, strung in a line between Périgord and Limousin to guard the south-south-western approach to Limoges, with Châlus-Chabrol among them and, from the following century, Géraud de Maulmont's castle of Châlus-Maulmont facing it.

The castle was built by Bernard Chabrol on the orders of the viscounts of Limoges to control the road from Limoges into Périgord. The lords of Limoges deliberately diverted the old Bourges–Bordeaux route through Châlus to keep it off the lands of the powerful lords of Lastours, and that traffic, together with the founding of the abbey of l'Abeille nearby, raised a castle town — the Villehaute — and important fairs beneath the walls.

In March 1199 Richard the Lionheart came south to put down the revolt of Aimar V, viscount of Limoges. His troops under Mercadier, the Aquitanian war-captain in Richard's service since 1184, besieged Châlus-Chabrol, then a possession of Aimar. Inside were just thirty-eight people, women and children included, who took refuge in the keep while the besiegers set about sapping the tower.

From the top of the donjon a crossbow bolt struck the king — loosed, the local tradition says, by the knight Pierre Basile, though another account names a defender called Bertrand de Gourdon. The garrison in its last refuge surrendered; Richard died of the gangrened wound on 6 April 1199, having demanded that his entrails be buried in the castle chapel, where they remain.

In 1265 Marguerite de Bourgogne, dowager viscountess of Limoges, gave the castle to Géraud de Maulmont. He left it in 1299 to his nephews Guillaume and Pierre, but the French crown contested the succession and Philip the Fair dispossessed them in 1303. Philip the Long granted it in 1317 to Henri IV de Sully, whose inheritance carried it to Alain d'Albret. Alain's daughter Charlotte brought it as her dowry to Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, and their daughter Louise Borgia carried it in turn, in 1535, to Philippe de Bourbon Busset. The Bourbon Busset line — its elder branch styled Bourbon Châlus — held it until 1995.

The fortress saw fighting again in the Wars of Religion. In 1592 it was in Protestant hands under Captain Labesse when Chamberet, governor of the Limousin, and the Catholic comte de Bourbon de Busset laid the fifth siege of its history, battered it with the cannon of Limoges and took it.

Dismantled during the French Revolution, Châlus-Chabrol was restored in the mid-19th century by the comte de Châlus, who installed nuns of the Instruction de l'Enfant-Jésus there on 16 February 1854 and in 1861 restored the tower adjoining the main dwelling, which was threatening ruin. The keep and corner tower were classed as monuments historiques by decree of 25 March 1981.

Bertrand Heyraud bought the castle from the comte de Bourbon-Châlus in 1995 and spent four years restoring it. In 1999 the eighth centenary of Richard's death was commemorated there under the joint presidency of the Queen of England and President Jacques Chirac. The castle changed hands again in 2008 and passed in March 2019 to Jacques Vigneras.