Long ago it was a proud abbey...

In the mid-16th century the Abbey was pillaged and partly burned by Calvinists, and records of the following year mention 24 monks remaining. It continued to exist, until the French Revolution reduced it to a heap of ruins, and scattered then existing members. After its sale to the Revolution as national property, the abbey became a stone quarry, dismantlers working to tear, including dynamite, construction material and especially the size of stones which constituted siding walls, often leaving only a few stumps of the large internal masonry rubble with lime mortar. Probably nothing would have remained today of this very important Cistercian abbey if in the mid-19th century Arcisse de Caumont would not had intervened by buying the most famous relic called "la Porte Saint-Louis" which gave access the cloister and large refectory.