The first palace of Versailles was a hunting-lodge built by Louis XIII. at the angle of the present Rue de la Pompe and Avenue de Saint-Cloud. This he afterwards found too small, and built, in 1627, a moated castle, on the site of a windmill in which he had once taken shelter for the night. The buildings of this château still exist, respected, as the home of his father, in all the alterations of Louis XIV., and they form the centre of the present place. In 1632 Louis XIII. became seigneur of Versailles by purchase from François de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris.
THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES.
The immense works which Louis XIV. undertook here, and which were carried out by the architect Mansart, were begun in 1661, and in 1682 the residence of the Court was definitely fixed at Versailles, connected by new roads with the capital. Colbert made a last effort to keep the king at Paris, and to divert the immense sums which were being swallowed up in Versailles to the completion of the Louvre. The very dulness of the site of Versailles, leaving everything to be created, was an extra attraction in the eyes of Louis XIV. The great difficulty to be contended with in the creation of Versailles was the want of water, and this, after various other attempts had failed, it was hoped to overcome by a canal which was to bring the waters of the Eure to the royal residence. In 1681 22,000 soldiers and 6,000 horses were employed in this work, with such results of sickness that the troops encamped at Maintenon, where the chief part of the work was, became unfit for any service. On October 12, 1678, Mme. de Sévigné writes to Bussy-Rabutin:—
“The king wishes to go to Versailles; but it seems that God does not, to judge from the difficulty of getting the buildings ready for occupation and the dreadful mortality of the workmen who are carried away every night in waggons filled with the dead. This terrible occurrence is kept secret so as not to create alarm and not to decry the air of this favori sans mérite. You know this bon mot of Versailles.”
Nine millions were expended in the Aqueduct of Maintenon, of which the ruins are still to be seen, then it was interrupted by the war of 1688, and the works were never continued. Instead, all the water of the pools and the snow falling on the plain between Rambouillet and Versailles was brought to the latter by a series of subterranean watercourses.
No difficulties, however—not even pestilence, or the ruin of the country by the enormous cost—were allowed to interfere with “les plaisirs du roi.” The palace rose, and its gigantic gardens were peopled with statues, its woods with villages.
Under Louis XV. Versailles was chiefly remarkable as being the scene of the extravagance of Mme. de Pompadour and the turpitude of Mme. du Barry. Mme. Campan has described for us the life, the very dull life, there of “Mesdames,” daughters of the king. Yet, till the great Revolution, since which it has been only a shadow of its former self, the town of Versailles drew all its life from the château.
Approaching from the town on entering the grille of the palace from the Place d’Armes we find ourselves in the vast Cour des Statues—“solennelle et morne.” In the centre is an equestrian statue of Louis XIV. by Petitot and Cartellier. Many of the surrounding statues were brought from the Pont de la Concorde at Paris. Two projecting wings shut in the Cour Royale, and separate it from the Cour des Princes on the left, and the Cour de la Chapelle on the right. Beyond the Cour Royale, deeply recessed amongst later buildings is the court called, from its pavement, the Cour de Marbre, surrounded by the little old red château of Louis XIII.
The Cour de Marbre was sometimes used as a theatre under Louis XIV., and the opera of Alcestis was given there. It has a peculiar interest, for no stranger can look up at the balcony of the first floor without recalling Marie Antoinette presenting herself there, alone, to the fury of the people, October 6, 1789.