...talking of Richard Coeur de Lion.
Châlus-Chabrol is about an hours drive from my French house.
This is the castle Richard was besieging in 1199 when he received his fatal crossbow bolt.

I've only got a couple of days left before I have to head back to England so I am taking tomorrow off from the garden and going to see some sights.
Just around the corner from Châlus-Chabrol is Montbrun castle.

Mostly 15th century only the rectangular tower remains from the original 12th century stone castle.
On the way to these two castles is the village of Oradour Sur Glane.
Whilst it does have a Castle...
Edit - not a castle after all. This building is the Roman Catholic church that most of the victims died in

...this is not my reason for wanting to visit.
Oradour sur Glane was the site of a horrific massacre by men of the SS Das Reich Panzer division in WWII.
The tank division was on its way north to reinforce the defenders in Normandy after D-Day.
French resistance fighters had attacked the railway system forcing the division to drive its tanks rather than transport them.
Enraged by the constant harrying of the column the Nazis took revenge on Oradour sur Glane.
They rounded up the population of around 600 and separated the men from the women. One group was herded into a barn while the others were shut into the church.
Then grenades were thrown in and machine guns fired into the burning buildings.
Only one boy survived (I think) and managed to escape after the Germans had left.
After the war the site was not reoccupied and rebuilt, instead it has been left as a memorial to the people who died there.
Curiously, while searching for images I came across this article in today's Irish Times about an 88-year old former SS soldier facing trial in Germany for his part in the massacre.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/e ... -1.1648429
Most of the men responsible for the massacre died in the Falaise pocket a few weeks later.