THE BROCHURE SERIES
The Petit Trianon: Versailles
English Carved Fireplaces
APRIL, 1900

PLATE XXVII

CHATEAU, PETIT TRIANON

THE PETIT TRIANON: VERSAILLES.

During the first years of his reign, Louis the XIV. of France resided, as his predecessors had, at St. Germain in summer; but for some reason—it is alleged that it was because the windows of the palace commanded a view of St. Denis, the royal mausoleum—he conceived a dislike to it, and resolved to build another summer palace for himself at some spot not far from Paris. Why he chose Versailles is incomprehensible.

Whatever may have been the motive, however, he decided to erect upon this desolate, waterless and uninhabited site a vast palace to be surrounded by a park.

The cost of accomplishing this project was fearful, not in money alone (although this was more than one thousand million francs), but in human life. In 1681 twenty-two thousand soldiers and six thousand horses were employed on the work, and so unhealthy was the site that the workmen died by thousands. Writing in 1767, Madame de Sévigné says: "The King is in haste that Versailles should be finished; but it would seem that God is unwilling. It is almost impossible to continue the work owing to the fearful mortality among the workmen. The corpses are fetched away by cartfuls during the night,—night being chosen that they who still live may not be terrified into revolt by the sight." But no difficulty, nor the pestilence, nor the ruin of the treasury was allowed to interfere with the King's pleasure. The palace rose; the stately gardens, peopled with statues, spread about it; and a royal city sprang up where before had been only a desolate forest; and, after 1682, Versailles became the permanent headquarters of the Court.

In the immense park, some three-quarters of a mile northwest from the terraces of the palace, Louis XIV. built a little palace to gratify Madame de Maintenon, which, from the fact that it stood on the site of the parish of Trianon, which was demolished to make a site for it, and because its façade was ornamented with porcelain plaques of blue and white faience ware, was called the "Trianon de Porcelaine"; but in 1687 Louis, who had as Saint-Simon said, "a rage for building," demolished this frail structure and replaced it with another, designed by Mansart, which we now know as the "Grand Trianon." This building was the King's delight for a few years, but after 1700 he wearied of the plaything, and turned all his attention to his new château at Marly.