When Louis XIII succeeded as French king in 1610, Versailles was a prosperous hamlet set in an upland valley which was only partially cleared for cultivation. There were 200 residents near this primal woodland.
The Latin word vertere means to turn the soil and immortalizes the “hard grind of the medieval farmers who tilled its soil.” Thus came the name of Versailles. Louis XIII’s first house on this site was in 1623. Fast forward: Louis XVI had ambitious rebuilding plans on the eve of the French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, and thus Versailles ceased to be a royal residence.
Historians do not agree on the causes of the French Revolution, however, the Catholic Church owned one-tenth of the French land and did not pay any taxes. The peasants were the victims of heavy taxes. Louis XVI tried reforms, but the nobility and the clergy refused to accept them.
Prior to the Revolution, France was an absolute monarchy. The power of the monarchy was checked by the nobility, the Roman Catholic Church, national and local customs, and the threat of insurrection. Louis XVI tried to bring the nobility under control by inviting them to stay at his extravagant Palace of Versailles and to participate in elaborate court rituals with a strict code of etiquette.
The king wanted to build a medium-sized country chateau with walls of creamy stone. Decorative panels of red bricks had roofs tiled with blue slate. The color scheme was the red, white and blue livery of the king’s household. Philibert Le Roy, the architect, added the seigneurial touch of a dry moat. The house and its contents needed protection when the monarch was absent.
The king’s rooms were on the first, or noble, floor. Accommodations for his queen were on the south side with his on the north. The court had its own licensed merchants who set up stalls of books, lace, gloves, fans and other luxury goods inside the royal palace. They were assigned the upper-floor room of the small building linking the south wings to the central block. Today, this room is a museum shop.
King XIII kept buying more land. At his death, the estate included the stag park, outbuildings for kitchens, stables and kennels, and a covered tennis court. Everything was inherited by his elder son and successor, the four-year old Louis XIV.
In his 20s Louis XIV redecorated the chateau. His great passion was the park. Trees and shrubs were clipped and sheared. He divided the terrain into bosquets with geometric shapes. Water works and kinked paths revealed surprises of sculpture, water and orientation to “liken the nature of his rule to the daily passage of the life-giving sun.”
Throughout the 1670s Louis XIV lived there in the Summer months when the gardens looked and smelled its best. Louis had faults of character in 18th-Century France so that couriers remembered him as “the vainest man ever.”
The clothes-conscious Louis XIV created a new office, grand master of the wardrobe, to stress the importance of dress at court. His clothes were stored in coffers guarded by wardrobe valets who slept there at night and then during the day assembled the outfits to be taken up to the king’s bedchamber. A lace maker was on hand to repair that particularly fine and vulnerable fabric. There were 36 valets who made the king’s bed and 16 ushers of the bedchamber.
Marie-Antoinette, a queen at 19, full of grace and charm, was locked into an arranged marriage that failed to produce offspring. Louis XVI indulged her every whim. He encouraged and supported her.
There was no parallel in Europe for the living arrangements of Versailles. There was a ruling dynasty, a swollen household of domestic employees, and a system of government in the one vast complex. It lasted in its glory until the 1789 Revolution.