Château de Chaumont

Château de Chaumont stands in Chaumont, France, and was erected during the medieval period by feudal lords connected to the counts of Geneva.

Origins reach into the 11th and 12th centuries when the site belonged to a fief under the counts of Geneva. A local lord named Guillaume de Chaumont, vassal of Aymon I of Geneva, is recorded in 1124. The castle itself appears in a document of 1174 under the Latin term castra and was transferred into the count’s hands sometime between about 1160 and 1178. On 25 August 1178 Guillaume I of Geneva performed homage to the abbot of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, marking an explicit religious tie to the abbey’s rights.

Through the later Middle Ages the place served as the seat of a châtellenie, an administrative district, and a fortified village grew beneath the rock. The village received its privileges on 18 May 1310. In 1273 Pierre de Bossy did homage for holdings in the castle to Aymon II of Geneva; three years later the stronghold was transferred together with Sallenôves to Aymon de Sallenove. Agnès de Châlons is recorded as residing at the castle in 1308. From 1355 the fief came under the house of Savoy, and detailed châtellenie accounts survive beginning on 21 January 1356, recording the men who administered the district through the following centuries.

Military conflict and destruction touch the castle repeatedly. In 1536, during the first French occupation of the duchy of Savoy by King François I, troops captured and dismantled the fortress, and François I spent the night there after passing Seyssel. The fortress was later rebuilt under Duke Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy. In 1589 and again in 1590 forces from Bern and from Geneva attacked the place while the seigneur de Thiollaz defended it. In 1630 royal troops of Louis XIII razed the castle completely. By 1681 the buildings were described as ruins when Marc-Louis Deschamps had the lands raised to a marquisate, and in 1774 Joseph-Nicolas de La Grange purchased Chaumont and took the title of marquis. Administrators of the châtellenie continue to be recorded into the mid-17th century.

The castle’s position on a rocky promontory at 636 metres altitude controlled the passage known as Malpas and the medieval road between Geneva and Seyssel, which followed a secondary route originally laid out in Roman times.