Castles and Chateaux of Old BurgundyMansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
History
Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy
Mansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
Burgundy (France) -- Description and travel; Castles -- France -- Burgundy
In Holy Week in 1657, at the age of forty-one, Bussy became involved in
some sort of a military scandal and was exiled from France. The
following year he made peace with the powers that be and returned to
court, when he composed the famous, or infamous, "Histoire Amoureuse des
Gaules," a work of supposed great wit and satirical purport, but
scandalous to a degree unspeakable. It was written to curry favour with
a certain fair lady, the Marquise de Monglat, who had an axe to grind
among a certain coterie of court favourites. Bussy stood her in great
stead and the scheme worked to a charm up to a certain point, when Louis
XIV, not at all pleased with the unseemly satire, hurried its
unthinking, or too willing, author off to the Bastile and kept him there
for five years, that no more of his lucubrations of a similar, or any
other, nature should see the light.
In 1666 Bussy got back to his native land and was again heard of by
boiling over once more with similar indiscretions at Chazeu, near Autun.
Finally he got home to the chateau and there remained for sixteen
consecutive years, not a recluse exactly, and yet not daring to show
his head at Paris. It was a long time before he again regained favour in
royal circles.
The Cour d'Honneur of the chateau is reached by a monumental portal
which traverses the middle of the _corps du logis_. Above this are two
marble busts, one of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal, which came originally
from the Couvent de Visitation at Dijon, and the other of Colbert, the
minister of Louis XIV.
The ancient Salle des Devises (now the modern billiard room) has a very
beautiful pavement of hexagonal tiles, and a series of allegorical
_devises_ which Bussy had painted in 1667 by way of reproach to one of
his feminine admirers. On other panels are painted various reproductions
of royal chateaux and a portrait of Bussy with his emblazoned arms.
The Salon des Grands Hommes de Guerre, on the second floor, is well
explained by its name. Its decorations are chiefly interlaced monograms
of Bussy and the Marquise Monglat, setting off sixty odd portraits of
famous French warriors, from Duguesclin and Dunois to Bussy himself,
who, though more wielder of the pen than the sword, chose to include
himself in the collection. Some of these are originals, contemporary
with the period of their subjects; others are manifestly modern copies
and mediocre at that, though the array of effigies is undeniably
imposing.
The Chambre Sévigné, as one infers, is consecrated to the memory of the
most famous letter writer of her time. For ornamentation it has
twenty-six portraits, one or more being by Mignard, while that of "La
Grande Mademoiselle," who became the Duchesse de Berry, is by Coypel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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