So this week we went to Versailles and the Panthéon...
I thought about doing a little “Sophie’s World” kind of
thing through this blog on the French Revolution and my experiences here in
Paris.
To talk about Versailles, I must explain a little about why
it was built.
It was during the Ancien Régime, Louis XIV, le Roi-Soleil,
ordered Versailles to be built in his father’s Louis XIII hunting lodge, where
as a boy, he played and hunted there. It was a huge project, Louis Le Vau was
the palace architect and André Le Nôtre was the landscape and garden architect.
In 1682 Versailles was ready, and Louis XIV decided that he
would move there for good, and Versailles would be the official residence of
the King of France.
All the most important nobles from the Second Estate moved
there, and worked for the king, dressing him and watching him eat.
A lot of things happened during Louis XIV’s reign, it would
take me too much time to explain it all; he died in 1715 from smallpox. His
great-grandson Louis XV, le Bien Aimé succeeded him, and let’s just say he made
a huge mess in French politics, getting France into war with Britain during the
Seven Years War (aka French-Indian war in American), France was in debt, and by
the time of his death in 1774 people hated him, and nobody cared he had died.
Louis XVI marks the “fall” of Versailles (after him no one
would ever live in Versailles). In 1774 he became King of France, he was
already married to Marie-Antoinette d’Autriche, as a form of alliance between
France and Austria, which after would become one of the main reasons that the
Revolution got to where it did.
The debt of France was so bad, and the monarchs kept
spending money, while the population was starving and could barely pay their
high taxes on basically everything such as on salt, land... Louis talked to his
advisor, the Finance Minister of France, Jacques Necker, and they came into a
conclusion to call the Estates-General in 1789. The Estates-General was an
assembly with representatives from all estates, clergy (first estate),
aristocracy (second estate), and everyone else (third estate).
The meeting was at Versailles, and when the third estate
realized that they wouldn’t get anything they wanted, since the clergy and the
aristocracy always voted “against” them, 2 against 1, they kept insisting in a
more aggressive way, the king did not like it, and after a break, the king
ordered the guards to lock the doors to the place, not letting the third estate
in.
The third estate was very mad at the king, and so they
marched to a Tennis Court in Versailles (the city not the palace), very close
to the palace, and they made an oath to stick together to write a constitution
to France, and they would be called from then on, the National Assembly!
(And that was the scene that we saw at the Panthéon.)
The king did not like that one bit, but still joined them as
their “leader”.
So now, I want to talk about the Panthéon and how much I
enjoyed it.
That place is full of people who have been someone important
to France at one point during the revolutions and so on. Rousseau for instance
was a great philosopher whose books and ideas influenced the Revolution the
most.
I was disappointed that the people that I wanted to see were
not there anymore, such as Mirabeau (one of the first leaders of the third
estate after the Tennis Court Oath), he was taken out of there and replaced by
Marat (also a very important leader during the revolution, he was a Girondin,
also taken away from the Panthéon and put into a cemetery...), I don’t know
why, but I’m guessing because after the King tried to escape in 1791 and people
found out he was working very closely with the king and queen in the beginning
of the revolution, they called him an impostor, but he died in a normal way and
not guillotined.
But just to know that this place was built to honor the
revolution and the people who fought for it to me is good enough. I was very
much happy about it.
Versailles was the same for me, I felt like I was living a
bit during the Revolution, and even the years prior to it, but I wanted to see
more of the palace, and not just the gardens. I wanted to see bathrooms, other
rooms, secret rooms, and more stairs, the KITCHEN!!! But to be there and see
the rooms of the King and Queen was very nice, and very enjoyable.
I hope to go back there in a month and see it all again. Sit
by the garden and try to pretend it’s the 1780s...
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