WATERLESS VERSAILLES

"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,

my translation (slightly shortened) and underlining. 

 

Louis builds his Xanadu on a swamp that brings malaria, dysentery and pleurisy: "It was forbidden to speak of the dead, that the heavy labor and, still more, the miasma killed." 

-- Saint-Simon

# # #

An aspect that should have made the site impossible: absence of water.

Building the Chateau of Versailles by Adam Frans van der Meulen, 1669 / zoom

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

After wells are dug and a small river diverted, Versailles uses more water than does all Paris, but there is still too little for fountains and the Grand Canal.

-- Water per Parisian, for all uses: one liter a day

(Pascal Payen Appenzeller, historian of Paris)

• Eventually there is enough for special occasions...

     The Apollo Bassin in the Park of the Château de Versailles  by Adam Perelle? , end 17th century / zoom

•  Even today the full waterworks are reserved for weekends during the tourist season, and special occasions;

                                                                  Versailles, Perspective of the Famous Canal, 2010 / zoom

Even today, the full water display is exceptional.

So Louis sends out an international call for engineers, who invent the most complex pump ever yet built (in 1679-1686). But even if all the water had been used for Versailles's fountains and Grand Canal, it would only have supplied a fourth of the needs.

-- Description of difficulties:  Machine of Marly, Wikipedia 

View of the Machine de Marly by Pierre-Denis Martin,1722 / zoom

• Half is diverted to another chateau, Marly, a more intimate residence that Louis establishes at the edge of the park...

View of the Chateau de Marly by Pierre-Denis Martin, 1725 / zoom

• And to the fountains of his mistress's chateau. 

# # #

Projected solution: Hydraulic works, which include an aqueduct twice as high as the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral, to reach over 50 miles.

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

Zoom

Project to deviate the waters of the Eure, 1685-1688 (Site not secured)

About 12 miles actually built (the solid blue line).

Flat-bottomed boats are specially constructed to carry stones from the regions of Champagne and Brie and canals are built to bring lead pipes from England. None of this has any other use. 

Extras: barracks, carts, horses, tools (many are stolen).

Zoom

Now.

War leads to abandoning the project. 

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). 

"Water was missing no matter what one did, and the wonders of art that were the fountains dried up."

-- Saint-Simon 

 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.

-- Versailles is thought to have absorbed a third of all taxes for 30 years:

 Athenaïs by Lisa Harding, 2002.

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