Usier Castle (Château de Sombacour)

En un regard

Le château en bref

Above Sombacour, in the Haut-Doubs, the ruins of Usier Castle guard the exit of the Col des Roches on the former road to Pontarlier. The fortress was built in the eleventh century by the Lords of Joux, powerful lords of the Comtois mountains. Its history is one of successive destructions. In 1475, during the Burgundian Wars that pitted Charles the Bold against the Swiss, the Confederates captured and sacked it; it was then rebuilt. In 1639, during the Ten Years' War, a Comtois episode of the Thirty Years' War, the Swedish troops of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar seized it after a fierce bombardment, before the Comtois retook it a few weeks later. Its remains are said to have been razed in 1668, during the first French conquest of Franche-Comté. Built of limestone, the castle comprised a lower bailey and an upper bailey enclosed by a curtain wall and surrounded by a ring-shaped ditch, now the most legible element of the site. The base of the carriage gate, with its crapaudine, was uncovered when a track was widened. Listed in the Inventory, the site is not protected as a monument historique.