European Garden of Versailles: French Gardens

Then the King, tormented by accounts of the magnificence of the first occasion, proposed that Fouquet should hold another so that he could attend. Fouquet was to have been arrested at his own home in the midst of the celebrations, but Louis was persuaded to deny himself this gesture. Perhaps Fouquet might have saved himself by doing as Wolsey did with Hampton Court . . . `Why should a subject build himself so magnificent a palace?' . . . `To present it to his master.' Wolsey was not the only precedent; the Count-Duke Olivarez had done the same with Buen Retiro more successfully than Wolsey. But Fouquet loved Vaux. The arrest was made a month later and the Maecenas of his age was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in the Fortress of Pignerol where after nineteen years he died. Le Vau, Le Brun, La Fontaine, Moliere and Le Notre moved on to Versailles. They were the true makers of the great age and Fouquet was to some extent the maker of them. The story of Versailles is remarkable not only because it is one of the three most influential gardens in European history the Belvedere and Stowe are the others but because it is so clear an instance of a palace being created for a garden rather than the other way round. `Saint-Germain he abandoned; unique Saint-Germain, with its combination of superb vista and the vast stretches of forest that lie close beside; Saint-Germain, with its fine views, trees, soil and situation, its abundance of springs, its lovely gardens, its hills and terraces, its capabilities that might have been extended to include the beauties and convenience of the Seine. There was a city ready-made, whose site alone provided it with all that man could desire. All this, I say, he abandoned for Versailles, that most dismal and thankless of spots, without vistas, woods, or water, without soil, even, for all the surrounding land is quicksand or bog, and the air cannot be healthy.'1 The place was a not very palatial hunting box . . . `a little paste-board chateau' . . . built by that attractive character Louis XIII, who had been content to let Richelieu indulge in the display as well as exercise the functions of a King.