6.2. THE VERSAILLES ENIGMA

 

"IT WAS THE SADDEST AND MOST GRACELESS OF PLACES, WITHOUT WOODS, WITHOUT WATER, WITHOUT LAND, BECAUSE ALL WAS QUICKSAND OR SWAMP... 

The list of monstrous defects is endless, for a palace that is so immense, and so immensely expensive." 

-- Saint-Simon 

That palace has 2300 rooms, 67 stairs and miles of corridors, as well as 1400 fountains or bassins, in a place without water (more below). 

-- Internet and YouTube videos 

Historians explain it by memories of the civil war, when a crowd surrounded the bed of the 12-year-old king as, terrorized, he pretended to sleep and when the queen and her children had to flee Paris.

Maurice Leloir dans Le Roy Soleil, livre d'histoire pour enfants

So, they say, establishing king, court and government a little more than seven miles from Paris would shelter it from popular tumult, while the gigantic palace would allow welcoming the nobility and keep nobles from plotting in the provinces. As well, the huge and splendid palace would show the world the glory of the king.  

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But seven miles was not enough to protect from popular attack (as happened a century later), and the nobility had been tamed for a generation. And glory was announced already by the extraordinary act of tearing down Paris's rampart and building an arc of triumph at one of its gates.  

To understand the irrationality

— to us — 

of Versailles,

 more should be said about the choice of site.

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Next,

6.3.

No water!