VERSAILLES, A MADMAN'S PALACE?

"...THE SADDEST AND MOST GRACELESS OF PLACES...

without a view, without woods, without water, without land,
 because all was quicksand or swamp... 
one cannot come to the end of the monstrous defects of a palace
 that was so immense and so immensely expensive."

 -- The Duke of Saint-Simon, memorialist,  

Louis XIV and his court, underlining added. 

-- Versailles is thought to have absorbed a third of all taxes for 30 years:
 Athenaïs by Lisa Harding, 2002

• Yet the king owns

a series of other palaces,

with woods, land, water, towns.

Saint-Cloud and Saint-Germain
have spectacular views as well

The chateau of Saint-Cloud by Etienne Allegrain

Saint Cloud, which Louis cedes to his brother

Saint-Germain (Internet, artist not named)

At Saint-Germain, terraces spread over four leagues let one admire the river.  

-- Renaissance and Reform by Jules Michelet, 1855

A league: the distance covered in an hour's walk.

• Louis builds his Xanadu on a swamp

that brings malaria, dysentery and in winter, pleurisy:

"It was forbidden to speak of the dead,

that the heavy labor

and, still more, the miasma killed" 

-- Saint-Simon

• As well,

the swamp's water is unusable. 

So he has...

° wells dug and a small river diverted: 
Versailles uses more water than does all Paris.

When there is still too little for fountains and the Grand Canal,
essential for prestige...

-- Description of difficulties:  Machine de Marly, wikepedia

-- Water per Parisian, for all uses: one liter a day
(Pascal Payen Appenzeller, historian of Paris)

Building the palace of Versailles by Adam Frans Van der Meulen, London, Royal collection

The painting shows no water, which is brought in barrels.

° ...he has engineers invent 
the most complex pump ever yet built till then...
(In 1679-1686)

View of the Machine de Marly by Pierre-Denis Martin,1723,  Museum of the chateau of Versailles

It conducts water to the aqueduct at the top of the hill.

Marly chateau by Pierre-Denis Martin, 1724, Versailles

Even if all the water had been used for Versailles' fountains, it would only have supplied a fourth of the needs. But half is diverted to another chateau, Marly, a kind of weekend reesidence that the Sun King erects at the edge of the park. 

Not to mention the fountains of yet another chateau he builds for a favorite (Madame de Montespan).

° ...and starts an aqueduct 
twice as high as the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral,
which is meant to run over 20 kilometers.

War makes its building stop

-- Histoire du canal de l'Eure
by G. Despots and G. Bouquin 

Gérard Métron, https://structurae.info/photos/21303-aqueduc-de-maintenon

Flat-bottomed boats come from Auvergne are specially constructed to carry stones from Champagne and Brien as are canals are built to bring lead pipes from England. None of this has any other use. 

Extras: barracks, carts, horses, tools (many are stolen).
Laborers lack water. Because of that and the death toll, locals refuse to come. So Louis brings in soldiers, concentrating on regiments that have not repressed Protestants with enough energy (please read on). Deserters are sent to the galleys.

Sending the soldiers to war ends construction (in 1688). What has been completed is not kept up (after 1695). 

° "But water was missing 

no matter what one did, 

and the wonders of art

 that were the fountains dried up."

-- Saint-Simon 

• At the same time he...  

° tears down works of art
when he expands the palace... 

Louis XIV in front of the grotto of Thetys, anonymous, Versailles château

The first Trianon palace

When Madame de Montespan says a chateau he has built for her is worthy of an opéra dancer, he demolishes that too and constructs the better one with the fountains.

°...constantly renews the gardens...

Internet, Banque d'images

* Thousands of hot-house flowers are planted every day, and two million flower pots are in constant circulation.

* Ten thousand tulips are brought from Holland and planted at night, to surprise courtiers when they wake. 

...and replaces the priceless silks twice a year

When Madame de Montespan's pet bears tear them up, Louis says nothing. 

Versailles's association with the Sun King

has encouraged modern Heads of State

to stud Paris with monuments that recall them

 Web site of the Museum of Primal Arts

The Opéra Garnier is not named after fallen Napoleon III, but his initials and those of the Empress are repeated in gold along the whole facade; the Pompidou Center; the François Mitterand Library; the Jacques Chirac Museum of Primal Arts.

But those edifices did not take up

a third of the national budget.

In a modern context Versailles would be an aberration --

place it in its own. 

*     *     *

Next,

The logic of pharaonic spending