The castle was of Roman origin, the donjon being built by the first Cæsar, and, according to tradition, Pilate was imprisoned within it.
From the summit of the donjon floated Bourbon's haughty standard, which had been unfurled immediately after his arrival.
All had been razed to the ground but the donjon tower, to which was attached a small strip of garden enclosed between high walls.
So inferior was the quality of the prison rations, that those who purloined food could not sell it in the neighborhood and the peasants said that all that came from the Donjon was rotten.
He was an old man and had risen from the ranks, having been first a King's musketeer, then corporal, then Marechal de Logis, and was then appointed commandant of the donjon of Pignerol.
He had also the donjonof Vincennes, which was first a place of defensive usefulness and next a place of restraint and coercion for State offenders.
The castle consists mainly of the massive Donjon Tower, about forty feet square, and one hundred and ten feet high, and some ruined walls of less height, once part of adjoining apartments.
The donjon was showing the loopholes that pitted its southern face.
It seemed to me the garrison was showing unusually large, while the flags on the donjon were strange, and the tents and horses around the walls implied an army present.
The wind struck the Castle, and in the thick of the mists and flying leaves hurled at it, the donjon disappeared.
The Asiatic shore offered the Prince a long stretch, and he persisted in coasting it until the donjon of the White Castle--that terror to Christians--arrested his eye.
Dundrum Castle, attributed to the de Courcy family, stands finely above that town, and affords an unusual example (for Ireland) of a donjon keep.
Touges is a simple landing place, but rising high above the greenswarded banks are the donjon and imposing gables of the Chateau de Beauregard belonging to the Marquis Leon Costa.
Sometimes a fine old Gothic or Renaissance house will disappear altogether, and sometimes a chateau, a donjon or even a church may be turned to unlikely public uses, such as a hospital, a prison or a barracks.
The Tour du Donjon to the east, and the Tour de la Chapelle to the west are bound to a heavy ungainly façade which the Comte Roger de Bussy-Rabutin built in 1649.
During the Revolution it was acquired as a part of the biens nationaux of the government, and in 1799 the donjon of the chateau was pulled down, the same which is to-day being rebuilt stone by stone on the same site.
The old Chateau de Montbard is represented only by the donjon tower which rises grimly above the modern edifice built around its base and the sprawling little town which clusters around its park gates at the edge of the tiny river Brenne.
The roof and gables of the houses of the town rise abruptly from the low levels to the height on which sits the donjon and the shrine dedicated to the divinity of Louis XI, "Our Dear Lady of Embrun," as he called her.
Montersine, the nearest of these works, a vast rectangular donjon with echauguettes, must certainly have been the most formidable.
Semur's bourg, donjon and chateau, as the respective quarters of the town are known, tell the story of its past, but they tell it only by suggestion.
The donjon is still there in all its solidity and sadness, but it takes a climb of two hundred and fifty steps up an exceedingly steep stair to reach the platform of rock on which it sits, and this after one has actually arrived at the base.
The donjon of the old chateau, the Tour Brune, as it is called, is not far from the cathedral, within the confines of the military barracks.
Another isolated tower, even more stupendous in its proportions, is known as the Tour Saint Jean, and is a donjon of the ideally acceptable variety, dating from some period anterior to the chateau proper.
A donjon tower with a duck-pond before it, opposite the Hotel de la Poste is all the mediævalism that one sees within the town at Saulieu to-day.
Only the chateau donjon and immediate dependencies, a group of towering walls, rise grim and silent as of old above the great arch of the bridge flung so daringly across the Armançon at the bottom of the gorge.
His mind yet wandered, but he seemed to be easier than when Edgar and Peter had first entered his chamber in the donjon of Ruthenes.
Here several of the men-at-arms left them, and, escorted only by Duprez and one other, they skirted the massive walls of the donjon until they came to a small low door.
It hath a central donjon and also outer walls, most of it and all the stronger parts being built in its later days in imitation of the castles built by the Northmen in other parts of France.
He had hoped that his pursuers would ransack the donjon for him before coming to the conclusion that he had flown to the tunnel for refuge.
Because a few days since a secret way led from out this donjon beneath courtyard and moat into the shelter of the woods.
Conduct the prisoners to the strongest cell beneath the donjon and see them fast.
Dismounting, Beatrice and her maid were led to the door of the central donjon and up the stone staircase to a chamber almost on a level with the outer walls.
Plainly I had come to an abode of pleasure very different from the old and gloomy donjon of my imaginings.
I passed the night in repeating the dangerous leap from the window of the donjon with all the grotesque complications of fever and delirium.
We took advantage of the last rays of light to explore the interior of the donjonvery carefully.
Out of a window in the donjon tower of the fifteenth century was thrust a head, and from across the river it wagged at us malevolently.
Wilfred sat alone in an upper chamber of the donjon tower the Conqueror had erected at Oxford, hard by the mound thrown up by Ethelfleda, lady of the Mercians and daughter of Alfred.
So she rolls out the history of the celebrated spot until we reach the portals of the fortress, a lofty donjon flanked by two projecting turrets.
The little donjon adjoining the greater served as the residence of the Governor and communicated with the former tower by staircases in the thickness of the walls.
On the far side, the donjon keep, a vast circular structure, rises more than one hundred feet above us.
The great donjon and inner sections surrounded by its immense wall, with many towers, is in its turn encompassed by a moat completely isolating the whole.
The great donjon does not contain the most famous and fearful of Louis's prisons.
His own brother, being betrayed into his hands, was confined in this donjon frowning above us and that created war in all the province, in which the Pope and the Church and State were involved.
They saluted the returning sovereign with loud acclamations, and the standard of France floated from the donjon of the castle as witness to the fidelity of the inhabitants for the sovereign.
It is a remarkable view, looking landwards, that one gets from the height of the donjon of the Château d'If.
There is a fragment of the old fortress-château still left to view, bathing the foot of its crenelated donjon in the sea, a reminder of the days when the monks fought valiantly against pirate invasion.
She actually did take up a portion of the country, and the village of Salon, through the erection of a donjon and a royal residence, took on some of the characteristics of a capital.
The castle towers of Bareacres are fair upon the lea, Where the cliffs of bonny Diddlesex rise up from out the sea: I stood upon the donjon keep and view'd the country o'er, I saw the lands of Bareacres for fifty miles or more.
Cathedral; château (splendid view from donjon tower) in the Citadol, entrance i fr.
It left the donjon keep in total darkness, and in a stillness broken only by the dripping of water from the mouldy ceiling.
Then the moon slipped slyly from its frayed woolly covers, and relit the donjon keep.
Illustration: Donjon of Montrichard] One-third of Montrichard's population live underground or in houses built up against the hillsides.
Illustration: Donjon of the Chateau de Clisson] La Moine, a tiny and most picturesque river, still flows under the antique arches of the old bridge, which was held in turn by the Vendeans and the Republicans.
Fouquet, too, after his splendid downfall, was thrown into the donjon here by Louis XIV.
The ancient square donjon of the eleventh century, known as the Tour de Cesar, still looms high above the town.
Its donjon announces itself from afar as a magnificent feudal ruin.
It also fits into the landscape in a manner which no other mediaeval donjon of France does, unless it be that of Chateau Gaillard, in Normandy.
The tower and donjon are the only substantial remains of this early edifice.
The town is moreover most curious and original, the great rectangular donjon rising high into the sky above a series of cliff-dwellers' chalk-cut homes, in truly weird fashion.
The hieroglyph deserts the cathedral, and betakes itself to blazoning the donjon keep, in order to lend prestige to feudalism.
This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in the famous state prison, was also tolerably spacious and occupied the topmost story of a turret rising from the donjon keep.
The donjon of Vincennes was carried to its comparatively great height that it might serve as a tower of observation as well as a place of last retreat if in an attack the outer walls of the fortress should give way.
The adventurer who first built a donjon on the Rocher de Chantilly little knew with what seigneurial splendour the site was ultimately to be graced.
Madame de Maintenon did much to make the property more commodious and convenient and built the great right wing which binds the donjon to the main corps de logis.
He destroyed the courtines which attached the great donjonto the rest of the building, and opened up the courtyard so that it faced directly upon the park.
Originally it was quite regular in outline, its walls forming a rectangle flanked by nine towers, the great donjonwhich one sees to-day occupying the centre of one side.
The donjon has two granite staircases; one leads to the top, whence may be seen Vannes and the Morbihan, with its islands.
The square donjon and inner gate were built by Chandos.
As likely as not those jars are all licensed, and for that boy to have parted with his would have landed us both in a donjon keep.
I don't know in the least what a donjon keep is, but it sounds like a place to put people for a good while, and I had no time then for experimental knowledge.
The donjon and the encircling wall have been skillfully restored.
At the foot of the hill which sustains the donjon of Vez, we see, in the midst of the fields, a Gothic church of the flamboyant period, remnant of a Premonstraten-sian monastery.
Its two unsymmetrical wings terminate, the one in a great donjon of stone, the other in a round tower of brick.
As to Cerutti, the spectacle of this false donjon cannot distract him from his folly: Oh, castles of the oppressors!
He did not go round to the portico and knock at the front-door as a stranger would have done, but in behind the donjon chimney he pulled an alarm-cord.
In the corner next the donjon chimney was a little room with a small fireplace.
There were buttresses and antique windows, and by an ingenious transformation the chimney, usually such a disfigurement to a log-house, was made to look like a round donjon keep.
