Before the year 1519 there had been only the grim and gloomy feudal castle of Chambourg on the site, and the excellent hunting in the scrub and swamps of the Sologne (the name given to this marshy district) was the only reason for the visits of the Court. But in that year François I. began the construction of the existing château in place of the old one; and belonging to that era of magnificence when the Renaissance influence was being felt throughout Europe, he built the largest and most splendid hunting-box the world has ever seen. Although 1,800 workmen were employed year after year to carry out Pierre Nepveu’s designs, when the King died, in 1547, only the central portion and the east wing, which contained his own apartments, were completed. His successor, Henri II., added a wing, but liked Anet better, and Charles IX. and Catherine de Medici preferred Chenonceaux, Blois, and Chaumont. Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. regarded it as a hunting-box, but the latter came to the amazing conclusion, after his first visit to the place with his Court, that it was too small, and plans were prepared for two additional wings, which, however, were never built, although the foundations of one were laid; on them were built, in the eighteenth century, the barracks still to be seen. They were for the accommodation of the regiment of Uhlan horse, with which the famous Marshal Maurice de Saxe, of Fontenoy fame, amused himself when in retirement at Chambord. It is, however, the figure of the magnificent François I., the King who, at the death of his English neighbour, spoke of Henry VIII. as his old friend, to whom one’s thoughts turn in walking through the great Renaissance courtyard and the innumerable and vast apartments ornamented on every side with his fiery salamander. In spite of their rich coffered ceilings the apartments are cold and bare, and need the sumptuous furnishings of the sixteenth century and the King himself apparelled in his favourite pink or blue Italian velvet. In the middle of the central pile of buildings is a remarkable double staircase, so arranged that those ascending by one spiral cannot be seen by those coming down the other. This no doubt had its uses and advantages in the sixteenth century, when Court intrigue added a zest to life. The custodian takes visitors on to the roofs, where the extraordinary detail of the chimneys, balustrades, turrets, and dormers can be seen closely. The uncarved surfaces of stone are generally adorned with slate cut into various patterns and fixed up with nails. Nearly all the hundreds of rooms are vast, bare, and lifeless, and one feels in the echoing spaces that the tide of social progress has left such colossal buildings--the greatest that the final phase of feudalism produced--far away on a half-forgotten beach of history.