At the end of the 18th century, Marie-Antoinette's estate in Versailles dazzled the whole world.
In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars tells you about the creation of a real-fake Norman village in the extension of the Petit Trianon park: the "Hameau".
Completed three years before the Revolution, this extravagant ensemble will be the last project of the guillotined queen in 1793.
In 1774, Louis XVI offered Marie-Antoinette the Domaine du Petit Trianon in Versailles. In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars tells you how the queen transformed the place and ends up having built there the idealized reconstruction of a Norman village: the famous "Hameau" .
Of all the nocturnal festivals given by the Queen of France in the Anglo-Chinese gardens of the Petit Trianon, the most exceptional takes place on June 21, 1784. It is given in honor of the sovereign of Sweden, King Gustav III.
This is his second visit to France, under the name of Comte de Haga.
He already knows the gardens of the Petit Trianon but this time, Marie-Antoinette has outdone herself to dazzle her guest.
Of course, the King of Sweden is not alone.
In his delegation, he is accompanied by Count Axel de Fersen who also knows the Queen and the Trianon very well ... After having fought alongside La Fayette during the war for independence of the English colonies in America, the Swedish officer indeed became a protégé of Marie-Antoinette.
She had him appointed colonel of the Royal Swedish regiment, then stationed at Valenciennes.
In a letter to his brother, Gustave III recounts this magical evening: “We played“ Le Dormeur Réveillé ”at the Petit Théâtre, by M. de Marmontel, music by Grétry, with all the ballets of the Opera, gathered at the Comédie Italienne.
The diamond decoration ended the show.
We dined in the pavilions in the garden and, after supper, the English Garden was illuminated.
It was a perfect enchantment.
The Queen had allowed honest people who were not supper to walk, and we had warned that they had to be dressed in white, which really made the spectacle of the Champs-Elysées.
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The king obviously alludes to mythology: the Champs-Elysées is a part of the Underworld which welcomes heroes and virtuous men after their death.
It is an idyllic place where they lead a happy posthumous existence.
Gustave III makes us dream with all these people dressed in white, strolling by torchlight in front of the brilliantly lit Temple of Love, and also along the small lake where the Belvedere, also perfectly lit, is reflected in the 'water.
The queen is charming.
She speaks with all the Swedes present.
Louis XVI is there too, with his ministers as well as the princesses of the blood, including the Princess of Lamballe.
All the amazed foreign spectators cannot imagine that beyond the Temple of Love, a gigantic project is underway.
We are digging a pond, which we will call the Great Lake, three or four times the size of the small illuminated lake around which, that evening, we are walking.
This pond is part of the queen's new big project.
It is intended to border a veritable small Norman village which has not yet emerged from the ground: “le Hameau”.
Louis XVI offers the Petit Trianon to Marie-Antoinette
To understand this story, we have to go back to 1774. It was the year of Louis XV's death which, on May 10, made Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, aged 20 and 19, respectively, the king and the queen of France.
They were married four years earlier.
The Dauphin Louis, grandson of Louis XV, showed himself to be quite indifferent to Archduchess Antonia, the last daughter of Empress Marie-Thérèse.
He is very tall, borrowed, a little clumsy.
He has several passions, especially hunting.
His young wife, she loves parties, balls, toiletries and games. Little by little, the future king falls in love with his very charming wife, without however managing to be “completely her husband”, it is to to say that it does not really consume their union.
Their first daughter, Marie-Thérèse, was not born until eight years after their marriage.
And again, it took the intervention of Marie-Antoinette's brother, Emperor Joseph II, who explained, in great detail, to his brother-in-law how to have a child for his wife ...
When Louis XV died in 1774, Louis XVI was very much in love and only sought to please his wife.
He knows she dreams of having a country house of her own.
He offered her the domain of the Petit Trianon which became the private property of the queen.
We understand the generosity of Louis XVI and the enthusiasm of Marie-Antoinette.
The Petit Trianon is a charming neoclassical castle, built at the request of Louis XV by the architect Gabriel from 1762.
The idea had come from Madame de Pompadour, then her favorite.
The king had created, beyond the Grand Trianon, an exceptional botanical garden, filled with hot and cold greenhouses.
It was the most beautiful garden of its kind in Europe.
La Pompadour thought that a small castle in the middle of the gardens would save the sovereign from tiring himself out on unnecessary journeys between the Grand Trianon and its botanical garden.
She died before the construction of the Petit Trianon was completed.
It is the new favorite of Louis XV, Mme du Barry, who will enjoy this delicious place with her royal lover.
And that's where it hurts.
Louis XVI gives the Queen a castle whose previous occupant was the last mistress of King Louis XV!
A queen succeeds a favorite… Why not?
But above all, Louis XVI made his wife the owner of the domain, which was contrary to all the practices of the French monarchy.
Indeed, a queen of France has no private property, the royal domain belongs only to the king.
What does it matter!
Marie-Antoinette is happy.
She will model the Petit Trianon to her liking and to her image.
He will become the incarnation of what is called “Marie-Antoinette taste”.
She redecorates the apartments but above all invents a new fashionable garden ...
The Queen's Anglo-Chinese Garden
Marie-Antoinette is a fashionable queen in all areas: we know the astronomical sums she will spend at her milliner Rose Bertin to dress.
For the interior decor of her apartments, she called on the greatest cabinetmakers of her time, such as Riesner and Boulard.
But it is also in fashion for its garden!
At the end of the 18th century, tastes in this area changed.
For thirty years, England has set the tone.
French gardens like the ones Le Nôtre designed for Versailles are considered boring with their symmetry, their straight paths and the monotony of their trimmed yews.
We only dream of a free nature, with winding and irregular paths, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes.
One can only imagine wooded hills from which waterfalls descend which turn into rivers in the middle of harmoniously flowered meadows.
Even the Empress of Russia, Catherine II, succumbed to this fashion and admitted it in a letter to Voltaire, in 1772: “I love English gardens, curved lines, gentle slopes… in short, anglomania dominates in my plantomania.
It is in the midst of these occupations that I quietly await peace. ”
Marie-Antoinette visited the most beautiful English gardens that already exist in Ile-de-France, that of the Duke of Chartres in the Plaine Monceau, which later became the Parc Monceau, the Parc de Chantilly du Prince de Condé, the garden of the Duke of Biron in Paris, rue de Varenne but especially that of the Comte de Caraman, rue Saint-Dominique.
It is the garden that she prefers and her owner will help her by presenting a project for the Trianon.
The queen is perfectly organized.
It will keep the same team for all the projects it will implement until the last one, which will be the Hamlet.
She is loyal to the trio of architect Richard Mique, a native of Lorraine who worked for Stanislas Leszczinski in Nancy, then for his daughter Marie, wife of Louis XV, then for their daughters, notably Mme Adelaïde.
The second is the gardener Antoine Richard, son of Claude Richard, the gardener of Louis XV.
Finally, not always appearing in written projects, the third is the talented painter Hubert Robert who, with a stroke of a pen, can draw a small Temple of Love as elegantly as a Norman village mill.
In July 1774, the king gave orders for an increase in the land intended for the garden.
It must be surrounded by walls because it is indeed the private domain of the queen that it is.
Most of the greenhouses of the botanical garden of Louis XV are destroyed.
As for Louis XVI's collection of plants, they moved to the King's Garden in Paris, our current Jardin des Plantes.
It is Jussieu, its director, who takes care of it.
The work started is very important.
The only garden that remains in place is the French garden of Louis XV, which extends the Trianon terrace with, in the center, its delicious French pavilion.
Where were the greenhouses, Mique and Richard dig an artificial lake recovering the earth to constitute a mountain, just as artificial, called “alpine garden”, a monumental rock and a small hill on which is built a belvedere which allows to enjoy the whole view.
Starting from the lake, a river slips between flowery meadows, widened around an island where the Temple of Love is built.
The main problem encountered by the architect is, as always in Versailles, that of water.
At first, we only used that of the Bassin du Trèfle in the gardens of the Grand Trianon, but then other reservoirs had to be considered.
Mique and Richard first complete a beautiful lawn facing the queen's boudoir on which is placed a set of Chinese rings.
It is a merry-go-round with a central axis supported by three Chinese statues and surmounted by a large parasol with golden weather vanes.
Metal rings are hung around the parasol.
The players, mounted on dragons for men and peacocks for women, must, using a spear, collect as many rings as possible.
They are men, placed in the basement, who run the merry-go-round at arm's length.
In 1781, a platform was added for spectators: it was made up of three small Chinese pavilions linked together by a circular gallery.
This merry-go-round will delight the queen and her little coterie but will be very criticized: we will speak of “infantile games” ...
Monumental installations for the pleasure of the queen
The Temple of Love was inaugurated in 1777. The rock was not completed until 1781, as was the cave required by the queen.
This cave will generate a lot of talk because it is very comfortably furnished with a bench of moss surmounted by an opening which makes it possible to monitor the arrivals.
We can imagine a thousand turpitudes that will greatly harm the reputation of Marie-Antoinette.
The last building, also completed in 1781, is the belvedere: an extremely elegant octagonal pavilion with four French windows overlooking the gardens.
It will be used by the queen for breakfasts or other snacks.
At the same time, as early as 1778, she asked Mique to build a theater for her with all the technical improvements that a machine could allow at the time.
Externally, you can hardly notice it, its access door framed by Ionic columns is discreet.
It is accessed by a few steps.
The exterior sobriety contrasts with the extreme interior refinement: the room is blue and gold, highly decorated with moldings and sculptures.
But for reasons of economy, they were made of cardboard paste.
The queen indulges in the joys of the theater with her small troupe called “the lords”.
Empress Marie-Thérèse is a little worried about seeing her daughter perform on stage, but she will no longer be worried: she dies less than 6 months after the opening of the room.
Joseph II is now the only one to govern the Empire.
He won't burden his sister with her correspondence like their mother did.
Anyway, France is in joy the following year when Marie-Antoinette finally gives birth to a son, the Dauphin Louis-Joseph, born October 22, 1781. The queen then takes full advantage of her domain with her chosen small company. including his favorite, the Duchess of Polignac, the Duke of Guines, the Count of Vaudreuil and a few others.
But Trianon will not only serve the pleasures of Marie-Antoinette and her friends.
It will also be the site of great memorable night parties for selected guests, like the one I told you at the beginning of this episode, organized for the King of Sweden.
Trianon, a peaceful little village
The queen's two pregnancies changed her behavior.
Imbued with the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, she takes care of their education a lot and would like them to get closer to nature, so that they can walk in a real village, rub shoulders with peasants and understand their labor.
This is how the idea was born to extend the vast English garden with a large lake surrounded by small houses.
All of these houses constitute a hamlet.
Of course, Marie-Antoinette did not innovate with this project.
Many castles around Paris also had their real false villages.
The queen visited them all.
The most famous of them was that of the Prince de Condé in Chantilly.
They all had one characteristic in common: on the outside the houses or barns presented a dilapidated appearance and offered a striking contrast with their sumptuous interiors!
Thus, the Chantilly barn, apparently in very poor condition, concealed a huge living room in rich Corinthian architecture.
In her domain of Raincy, the Duchess of Orleans owned an English farm on the edge of a pond to which was added a surprising Russian village made up of isbas!
The queen's sister-in-law, the Countess of Provence, also had, in Montreuil, an English-style park and a very pretty hamlet of twelve houses designed by the architect Chalgrin.
Marie-Antoinette therefore asks Mique to draw a village and make models of it.
It was Hubert Robert who provided the idea for the twelve Norman-inspired houses.
The hamlet will be built.
This is the last step in the transformation of the Trianon estate by Marie-Antoinette.
Bibliographic resources:
Pierre de Nolhac, of the French Academy, Le Trianon de Marie-Antoinette (Calmann-Lévy, 1924)
Jean des Cars, The Queen's Hamlet, Marie-Antoinette's dream world (Flammarion, 2018)
"At the heart of History" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Production: Timothée Magot
Distribution and editing: Salomé Journo
Director: Jean-François Bussière
Graphics: Karelle Villais