Tea at Trianon: Discovering Chambord

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Discovering Chambord

From Oh La La!:

To celebrate his victory at Marignan, François 1er, new king of France, decided in 1516 to build a palace in Sologne to his glory. The construction project is nourished by the humanism of Alberti who defined the principles of Renaissance architecture, and work began in 1519. Initially, the castle of Chambord was to serve as a hunting castle, annexed to the Blois Castle. The first project drawn up by François 1er only provided for the construction of a castle-dungeon, confined on all floors to four round towers. The story goes that at that time, Leonardo da Vinci, who was staying in Amboise, would have participated in the development of the plans for the castle of Chambord alongside the architect Domenico Bernabei da Cortona. Following the imprisonment of François 1er in Madrid in 1525, work on the castle of Chambord was interrupted until 1526 and the king decided, on his return, to enlarge Chambord by adding two side wings to the keep. For several years, some 1,800 workers were busy building the castle and in 1539, François 1er received Emperor Charles V there. The royal wing, located in the north tower, was completed in 1544 and an exterior gallery and a spiral staircase were added in 1545. François 1st died in 1547, after 32 years of reign and ultimately only lived 42 days at the Chambord estate. Unfortunately, the castle did not arouse the interest of the kings who succeeded François 1er: Henri III and Henri IV did not stay there and Louis XIII only visited it twice during his reign. It will be necessary to await the advent of Louis XIV to see completed the project of François 1er. Louis XIV entrusted the work to the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, as for the Palace of Versailles, and the work was finally completed in 1686. In 1844, the new owner of the castle of Chambord, Henri Dartois, Duke of Bordeaux, undertook work to develop the park and restore the castle, following the multiple lootings that had taken place for decades on the estate of Chambord abandoned. (Read more.)