Battlefields -- France -- Guidebooks; France -- Guidebooks; Marne, 1st Battle of the, France, 1914
In 1662, the transformation of the park and forest was placed in the
hands of the great architect, Le Nôtre. The work continued until
1684. The result was a masterpiece, of which a great part is still in
existence, but of which the finest features (particularly the Great
Cascades which spread over the actual site of the town) disappeared
during the Revolution. Below, we give a view of these "Jeux d'eau"
(fountains), which were considered one of the wonders of the day.
In 1671, Louis XIV. spent three days at Chantilly, with all his court.
Marvellous festivities were held on this occasion. The guests of the
château alone filled sixty large tables; all the adjoining villages
were full of officers and courtiers, boarded and lodged at the prince's
expense. In one of her letters, Mme. de Sévigné tells of the tragic
death of the superintendent, Vatel, who had the responsibility of this
vast organisation. Desperate at the thought that fish would be lacking
at the king's table, he went up to his room, leant his sword against
the wall, and transfixed himself upon it.
All the great men of the seventeenth century visited Chantilly.
Bossuet, the intimate friend of the great Condé, presented to him
Fénelon and La Bruyère, who became tutor to the Prince of Condé's
grandson. Molière and his company came to play (Condé was his patron,
by whose intervention the production of _Tartufe_ was allowed).
Boileau, Racine and La Fontaine were habitual guests.
The development of Chantilly continued under Condé's successors, and
the castle was modified by Mansart. The Duc de Bourbon caused the
"Grandes Écuries" to be built by Jean Aubert. He established the
manufacture of porcelain there (ceased in 1870), the remaining pieces
of which are greatly sought after in our day.
[Illustration: THE OLD CASCADES OF CHANTILLY]
In 1722, Louis XV. stayed at Chantilly on his way back from his
coronation at Rheims. The festivities lasted four days; 60,000 bottles
of wine and 55,000 lbs. of meat being consumed.
It was Prince Louis-Joseph who saw the Revolution. He had spent
enormous sums in embellishing Chantilly, besides the twenty-five
million francs which it cost him to build the Palais-Bourbon in Paris,
the present seat of the Chamber of Deputies. He erected the Castle of
Enghien, named after his grandson, the Duc d'Enghien, who was the first
to inhabit it. (Early marriages were usual in these great families: at
the birth of the Duc d'Enghien his father was sixteen years old and his
grandfather thirty-six.) The Duc d'Enghien died in 1804, shot in the
moat of Vincennes.
The English garden and the hamlet are due to Louis-Joseph.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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