6.3. GARGANTUAN WORKS BRING (SOME) WATER

LOUIS WANTS TO BRING WATER FROM THE SEINE

Engineers from Lille (in northern France) answer his international call for engineers, and invent the most complex pump of the time.  

(In 1679-1686)

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

• But even if all the water had been used for Versailles's waterworks, it would only have supplied a fourth of the needs.

-- Description of difficulties:  Machine of Marly, Wikipedia 

• Half is diverted to another chateau, Marly, Louis's more intimate residence at the edge of the park, and to the fountains of his favorite's chateau. 

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

Flattening the terrain to build the perspective was another exploit.

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Solution: A canal would take water from the Eure River to Versailles, a distance of about 70 miles over different levels of terrain.

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

 

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About 12 miles were actually built.

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Flat-bottomed boats were specially constructed to carry stones from Champagne and Brie and canals to bring lead pipes from England. None of this construction had any other use, but French specialists did learn how to to make steel from iron so as not to import the lead: that is how the French steel industry began. 

Other expenses: barracks, carts, horses, tools (many stolen).

Laborers lacked water. For that reason and because of the death toll, locals refused to come. So Louis brought in soldiers, concentrating on regiments that had not repressed Protestants with enough energy (more on that coming). Deserters were sent to the galleys.

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An aqueduct would reach for 12 miles over the most sunken land. 

• Three levels of arches would make it higher than Notre-Dame Cathedral. Only part of it is built, and only one level.

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

 

• Many photos are touristic, but most impressive is coming upon the ruin unexpectedly as you drive. 

Nicolas Montard for Ouest France (cropped) / zoom

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The human cost

Who can tell the gold and men that that obstinate project cost over several years, during which it was forbidden, under the most severe sanctions, to speak of the sick, especially the dead, that the rough work and especially the miasma caused? How many suffered the effects for years! How many others would not regain their health for the rest of their lives! How many others never recovered! And no officers [...] could absent themselves for a quarter of an hour [...] .

     -- Saint-Simon, my translation, shortened

Video / zoom (no information on painting)

Sending the soldiers to war ends construction in 1688. What has been completed is abandoned after 1695. 

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

-- Saint-Simon 

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Versailles is the model for sites commemorating later Chiefs of State.

 Web site of the Jacques Chirac Museum of Primal Arts

 "N" for Napoleon III adorns the Opéra's facade, then there's the Pompidou Center and the François Mitterand Library. In the U.S., the J.F. Kennedy Center, the Obama Library, and, planned,Trump memorials.

But those edifices did not take up a third of the national budget for thirty years

-- Budget: Athenaïs by Lisa Harding, 2002.

In a modern context 

Versailles would be folly.

 Place it in its own.:

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Next,

6.4.

The neutralization and circulation of wealth