On the cover The Jeu de Paume room

Where does the topographical memory of the 1989 Revolution reside? On the Place de la Bastille? The July Column commemorates the victims of another revolution, that of 1830, and nothing remains of either the symbolic capture of the fortress or the Fountain of Regeneration where the biggest revolutionary celebrations took place. At the Tuileries, scene of the Convention, of overthrown royalty and the proclamation of the Republic? Another revolution passed through there, the Commune, which caused this triple place of memory to burn in March 1871. Our history has been so rich in convulsions that they have superimposed themselves, erased each other, destroying the original cradles. There remains Versailles, where in June 1789 the political fuse was lit in the Salle du Jeu de Palm.

It was in this room that on June 20, 1789, a few hundred deputies gathered to take the most famous oath in history, even more famous than that of Horaces or Koufra, the oath of the Jeu de Paume.

Everything is said there, in a few lines, about the requirements of democracy. His combative vocation, his unwavering courage in the face of adversity, his renewed demands, his adventure too. These deputies are one. They started a story together, together they finished it. No disunity or desertion is possible. Nothing will prevent them, they say, from meeting and debating. Nothing will deprive them of their legitimacy to represent the nation, to set its laws, to preserve its “constitution”, a repeated term. French democracy has produced nothing more admirable than this text, full of superb and largely forgotten.

Certainly, no one is unaware of the name of this founding text of our democracy. Everyone will be able to more or less place it in time, a little before – or a little after? - the storming of the Bastille. Some will maintain - wrongly - that the author was Mirabeau, confusing it with "the power of bayonets", a resumption and, so to speak, plagiarism of this first oath that the infected orator, until then quite discreet, would allow himself to be his initiative, three days later, on June 23, in another room, called Menus-Plaisirs. But the history of the place which served as the setting for the famous Oath remains little known.

Making history

First of all, let us recall the facts by which this quadrilateral until now devoted to a game of balls, entered history. It all began on May 5, 1789. The convening of the Estates General raised the question of their location. Louis XVI is not in favor of Paris, a dangerous and rebellious city. He prefers to have the deputies on hand. Created two years earlier for Court shows, the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs – today, rue des Chantiers – was already used in 1787 for the first assembly of notables. Warehouses were available, as were labor and wooden materials: a room was quickly built on a floating floor in the backyard, which until then had served as an open-air workshop. This plenary room is splendid but ephemeral. After a fire started, it was destroyed in 1800. All that remained was the main permanent building, converted into barracks in the 19th century before becoming the headquarters of the Baroque Music Center opened thirty years ago. In this courtyard, trees were planted in a layout that follows the boundaries of the old room. Some highlights of the Political Revolution took place there.

It was there that, on June 17, 1789, faced with the intransigence of the king and the deputies of the nobility who refused the system of voting by head, clinging to voting by order which gave them the majority with the clergy, the deputies of the third estate were constituted as a National Assembly. After having elected President Bailly, deputy of Paris already at the head of the third party, they took a first oath. The nation was born in action in this courtyard of Menus-Plaisirs where 630 deputies assumed legislative power. In this hotel, only the deputies of the clergy and the nobility were authorized to sit in rooms of the permanent building. In the third estate, we reserved the temporary room, with a floating floor. The layout of the premises sometimes says a lot about the balance of power. From the beginning of May to the end of June, the orders therefore did not cross, in situ confirmation of the sentence “divide and conquer”. Members of the clergy and aristocrats benefited from the ceremonial gate, avenue de Paris, and deputies of the third were relegated to rue des Chantiers, where the service entrance was located. The vexations continued on June 23, during the royal session convened by Louis XVI in the plenary room of this Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs. It's pouring rain. Clergy and nobility are introduced first, while the deputies of the third party wait outside, under downpours of water. It was on this day, after the session had been adjourned, that the third party refused to separate and that Mirabeau, responding to the grand master of ceremonies, the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, is said to have declared to him: “Go and tell those who send you that we are here by the will of the people and that we will only leave by the power of bayonets. »

A third was indeed burned. On June 17, their deputies formed an Assembly but also invited members of the clergy to join them. A new session was to take place on Friday 20. Understanding the danger, the king's entourage took the initiative by announcing on the night of the 19th to the 20th a royal session scheduled for Tuesday 23. President Bailly, who resided at the Hôtel de la Poste-aux-Chevaux, at 4, avenue de Paris – where the town hall of Versailles is located today – a stone’s throw from the Assembly Hall, was notified around 6:30 in the morning. He sends a secretary there: the hotel doors are closed and guarded by armed soldiers. He went there himself, accompanied by around ten deputies. A lieutenant confirms to him that the room, under construction for the hearing on the 23rd, is inaccessible. They can barely retrieve a few documents and see that the plenary room is indeed in full commotion.

But where to go now, when deputies are flocking to rue des Chantiers? Some suggest the Place d’Armes, others, the Château de Marly when a voice is heard, that of Doctor Guillotin. This deputy from Paris is also the doctor of the grooms of the Count of Provence, brother of the king. He often comes to Versailles, for example, to play tennis. So he knows a room, or rather this tennis court, which could do the trick. It's not far. “I walked at the head of this crowd of deputies who were first separated into platoons and who little by little had reunited,” Bailly wrote in his Memoirs. Several of his colleagues set out to scout the premises, hoping that they would be available. Fortunately, they are, as no one has scheduled a game that day. What is a revolution about? You have to imagine dozens of deputies going up Avenue de Paris in dispersed order, turning left in front of Place d'Armes and the castle, turning back on Avenue de Sceaux before turning right into Rue Saint-François (today rue Fontenoy). A strange procession, no doubt very innocuous, which is preparing to write history after having passed along the very place that they are going to shake.

In 1789, so that the tennis players could play at their ease, the room was almost empty. No furniture. No matter, we bring in two barrels which we place aboard. This is for the office. For the seat, we will do without it, Bailly preferring to remain standing. Two deputies keep watch to monitor the entrance in a dissuasive manner, while outside the crowd throngs in the neighboring streets.

Three days after the decision to form a National Assembly, we resumed the discussion. The ban on the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs is a strong sign sent by the monarchy. The third fears dissolution. Some suggest going to Paris for shelter. It was then that a deputy put forward the idea of ​​an oath. Mounier. He is a deputy for Grenoble. He experienced the turbulent days at the Château de Vizille where, in the winter of 1789, Parliament had already taken an oath. The principle is adopted. Barnave and Le Chapelier wrote the terms. “In whatever place the Assembly may be forced to establish itself”: we now understand this passage better. Bailly gets on the desk and reads. He hardly has to force his stentorian voice to be heard by his audience. Not all ‒ the 630 deputies of the third party ‒ can fit in this room which measures, by palm standards, 13 by 30 meters.

Unlike David's painting, which has them swearing in a beautiful ensemble and a perfect convergence of outstretched arms and turned faces, the deputies come to take the oath and sign in turn, by bailiffs or seneschals, in alphabetical order. The deputy for Agen was the first to sign, Mirabeau, deputy for Aix, the fourth, Robespierre, who came from Arras, the ninth. A report is in the National Archives, the duplicate being kept in the Palais Bourbon, while the room shows a copy. A single incident disrupts this ceremony. Martin Dauch, deputy for Castelnaudary, refuses to sign. His neighbor, Guillermine, tries to convince him. Bailly intervenes: this oath of democracy also embodies freedom of expression, we therefore cannot constrain dissenting voices by force. This is why Dauch is represented by David with his arms folded on his chest, as a sign of refusal. Some sick deputies were carried to be able to add their voice: thus Maupetit, deputy for Mayenne, whom David will represent as an old man when he was only forty-seven years old.

To make history, this ordinary sports ground only needed a few hours. No more, because gentlemen the deputies will not return to it again. The third-party arranged to meet two days later, Monday, June 22, the next day being a Sunday. It now remains to convince the clergy to come and swell their ranks. Let us imagine this Versailles buzzing with hundreds of deputies cheerful in the many cafes and estaminets that the city abounds with. It has been almost two months since they arrived from their provinces. If the nobles had little difficulty in finding accommodation ‒ they often had a relative who lived at the castle or already owned a house ‒ if the two Versailles parishes of Notre Dame and Saint-Louis offered to accommodate the clergy, for the third estate, the installation was a financial headache. The help of their bailiffs or their seneschals was far from sufficient to pay the exorbitant rent demanded by the people of Versailles, called by the city clerk to offer rooms, and who had taken advantage of this to skyrocket the prices. The deputies of the third were reduced to practicing shared accommodation, a practice that strengthened their links and the circulation of news.

Let's return to the clergy. Four of his deputies, from Bas-Poitou, have already taken the oath on the 20th in the afternoon, which David will be careful to highlight in the draft of his table where religion occupies a central place. At the foot of Bailly, in the first row, the triumvirate, or should we say, the triptych, composed of Grégoire, Rabaut-Saint-Étienne, and Don Gerle. Abbot Grégoire represents the regular clergy, Rabaut-Saint-Étienne is the spokesperson for the Protestants, and Don Gerle, absent however, the only monk deputy, embodies the secular clergy. But David is not at all vague. The curtains swell under the effect of the gust of a storm, that of history of course, underlined by the lightning which falls in the upper left corner of the royal chapel, which could not be seen from this place. He adds Marat, the future hero of the Revolution, on a balcony, taking notes on a sheet of paper, not far from a man accompanied by two children, who is none other than himself, the painter David.

For Monday 22, two versions compete. To prevent the third estate from meeting again at his house, the master plumber, reprimanded for the good welcome he had given him, would have been obliged to announce that the room had been rented by the Count of Artois. Bailly, in his Memoirs, offers another story: to better persuade the monks to rally behind them, the deputies would have renounced the Jeu de Paume, considered too frivolous, for a church. They first went to the neighboring Récollets convent, but the members of this order, whose resources depend on the king, feared reprisals; they made them believe that the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs was available again. The deputies had barely left when the monks locked their doors. There remains the Saint-Louis church, only a hundred meters from the Jeu de Paume hall. On one of the exterior walls of the building which is today a cathedral, a cartouche recalls that this church “saw the meeting of the third party and the clergy and that the oath of the Jeu de Paume was renewed there”. Nothing is more romantic than this stubborn and improvised wandering of the first democratic forces in a royal city where Act I of the Revolution took place. Our imagination associates its beginnings with the storming of the Bastille. July 14, 1789, was only the popular extension of a political revolution that was well underway. This “Parisianization” obscures the driving role played by Versailles in this great upheaval.

It was well within gunshot of the castle, very close to the monarchical palace, within the very heart of the system whose fall they were going to cause, that the turmoil of the Estates General led to the major turning points that were the constitution of the National Assembly, the Jeu de Paume oath, the night of August 4 and the Declaration of Human Rights (August 26). These last two events took place in the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs which the National Assembly, now Constituent, had managed to reinvest from June 23. But through a singular reversal of memory, the Versailles part of the Revolution was crushed by the monarchical dimension of the city. The vanquished got their revenge. Versailles, a true political epicenter, has forever kept its royal character, frozen in the spirit, pomp, and outdated splendor of Louis XIV. This partly explains the subsequent mishaps at the Jeu de Paume venue.

A painting in memory of a day

It all started well though. In 1789, a Jeu de Paume oath society was created, under the aegis of Gilbert Romme. This mathematician from Versailles has no shortage of ideas. He was later credited with the Republican calendar where he considered giving the May-June period the name of the “Jeu de Paume” month. He likes the companies that flourish in these times when speech is freer. From January 1790, he also formed with Théroigne de Méricourt the Friends of the Law club, responsible for informing the people of the work of the Constituent Assembly. On June 19, 1790, a brass plaque entered the National Assembly which now occupies the Salle du Manège in the Tuileries. We can read this sentence engraved there: “They swore it, they kept their word.” Hoisted on a stretcher, she is carried by four destitute people holding tricolor banners. They arrived in full preparation for the Federation Festival of July 14, 1790. The Assembly approved the project to affix the plaque on the wall of the Jeu de Paume room. The next day, here is the monument of revolutionary piety received with honors by the authorities of the city of Versailles. The plaque is sealed using stones extracted from the foundations of the Bastille. We can still see it in this same place.

The Jacobins club is not to be outdone. What was the old Breton club, the most virulent group of deputies during the spring of 1789, brought together the cream of the third estate, Mirabeau, Robespierre, Barnave, but also La Fayette. Its members embody the dynamic force of the Revolution. His first secretary, Dubois-Crancé, submitted the idea of ​​a painting, which would represent the great scene of the Oath. Friend of David, Dubois-Crancé suggests the name of the painter, favorable to the revolutionary cause. He has just joined the Jacobins. He had already considered immortalizing a revolutionary event, in this case, the riots of the winter of 1788. To justify his choice to the Convention, Dubois-Crancé recalled that David made himself known with a painting already representing an oath ‒ that of the Horatii and the Curiatii. David is also a prominent painter and, in the year 1790, his very political painting on the tyrant Brutus to whom the bodies of his sons whom he sacrificed are brought fuels conversations. He will be able to thank Dubois-Crancé by reserving a special place for him on Le Serment. He dominates the crowd of deputies, standing on a chair, at the same level as President Bailly. A national subscription was launched in the fall of 1790. 3,000 24-pound notes were issued, or 72,000 pounds, half of which went to David. The dimensions of the canvas are gigantic – 32 feet (more than 10 meters) high by 20 feet (more than 7 meters) wide – larger than those of his future masterpiece, The Rite of Napoleon. The Jacobins club aims to make a gift to the National Assembly located in the Tuileries so that its founding scene can be exhibited there.

In a speech vibrant with lyricism, on November 6, 1791, he appealed to the immortality of art, the only thing capable of preserving the trace of this imperishable event. “History will paint this moment when the deputies, wandering in the streets of Versailles, were only looking to meet to reunite, when the dismayed people asked: “Where is the National Assembly?” and couldn't find her anymore. » Note this formula: “History will paint. » Art and history merge, the first duplicates and transcends the second. David immediately gets to work with zeal and enthusiasm. To tackle work in an unprecedented format, he took up residence in the large nave of the Feuillants church, rue Saint-Honoré, a stone's throw from the Assembly. Having placed an advertisement in Le Moniteur for the deputies who had taken the oath, he received their visit, to paint them in their natural form or, failing that, their effigy which they had him carry. But the treasurer appointed for the occasion only received 652 subscriptions, barely a fifth of the expected payments. The Oath is not successful. On September 28, 1791, Barère, another member of the Club, who had campaigned from the outset for a painting, was forced to appeal to the National Assembly to supplement the missing sum with funds from the Public Treasury. During this time, the poet André Chénier published twenty-two stanzas that relate to the event of the Jeu de Paume. Some verses, which unfortunately have not been thought to be attributed to him, can be read today inside the room, on its south wall. “Let every Frenchman cry on his deathbed / If he has not seen these walls where his country is reborn. / May Zion, Delphi Mecca, and Sais / Have fewer believers attract the faithful eye. » Textual complement to David's painting, this hymn sanctuaries the place, calls for the pilgrimage of an entire people, for the perpetuation of a "forever famous temple". He makes a revealing request: that this “venerable abode” not be debased with gold and jasper. Chénier is of his time, the Revolution marking the beginnings of a reflection on the inclusion of heritage within a collective and patriotic memory.

Certain dates love history. The power that the symbol of June 20 still exerts was evident in 1792 when the Girondins, unhappy with the dismissal of their ministers by the king, chose this day to parade the Parisian sections to the Tuileries. France is now at war, tension is at its height. The banners read: “In commemoration of the Jeu-de-Paume oath. » This acts at the heart of the Revolution as a referent, its celebration also becoming a political gesture. Four days earlier, the municipality of Paris approved the project of a freedom tree to be planted on the Feuillant's terrace to celebrate the June 20 anniversary. But the event goes beyond its commemorative framework. Led by Pétion, the mayor of Paris, the citizens of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine forced the doors of the Tuileries Palace to make the sovereign reconsider the decision he had made to dismiss the Girondins. It was on this occasion that he was forced to wear a Phrygian cap and drink to the health of the nation. The test of strength failed, we saluted the passive courage of Louis XVI, but June 20, 1792, another significant revolutionary day, came to cover June 20, 1789, with a veil of violence. A patriot from the suburbs reinterprets the day of 1789 in a newspaper by exaggerating the role of the people, who would have protected and saved the deputies of the third party against the soldiers of royal arbitrariness.

1793 was the year the Revolution hardened. This turning point is of course not without consequences on the way we view the Oath. On June 2, a few days before the fourth anniversary, many of its protagonists, all Girondins, were arrested: Barnave, Le Chapelier, Rabaut Saint-Étienne, and the ex-president, Bailly. How can we now place at the center of revolutionary memory an event whose initiators are on the run or languishing in prison? Marat, with his usual moderation, had already brandished threats against the “conscript fathers,” whom he described as greedy scoundrels trafficking in the rights of the nation sold to the king. The Oath was placed within a monarchical framework. Unfair anachronism: the deputies of the third of 1789 are criticized for not having acted as in 1792. Not all of them have the excesses of Marat and this change of mood does not prevent the Convention from continuing to worry about the fate of the room. The conventional Marie-Joseph Chénier, undoubtedly sensitized by his brother's poem, explained to the Assembly the difficulties encountered by the new tenant, Lataille, who submitted his grievances to him. Not only did the city of Versailles have to undergo a demographic exodus, following the transfer of the Court and all the authorities to Paris in October 1789, but no one anymore came to play in a place that suffered from a double disability. For those nostalgic for the monarchy, it embodies the beginning of the end, for zealous Republicans, it has become a sanctuary that it would be sacrilege to violate through “frivolous games”. As a result, the room, deserted, had to be closed, causing a loss of income for Mr. Lataille, who declared himself, in wonderfully hypocritical terms, “unable to offer the nation the sacrifice of his property”. In other words, negotiations are open. The opportunity for the State to acquire a site which it wishes to turn into a place of worship.

Marie-Joseph Chénier spoke on the 11th Brumaire of the year II (November 1, 1793) to remind us that, if certain deputies from the third party subsequently went astray, the Oath nonetheless marks the starting point of a story glorious of which the Convention is the depositary. This call for gathering and reconciliation leads to a double decree which aims to declare the room a “national asset” and to dedicate its use to “national instruction”. The term is quite vague. Do we want to turn it into a museum? A building simply open to the public and intended for its civic and patriotic edification? Chénier does not specify, even if he announces that Versailles, once the ignoble city of absolutism, “has deserved well of the fatherland”, terms which he proposes to engrave within the building. The decrees have been issued, all that remains is to estimate the compensation with the tenant, Lataille, and the owners, of whom there are three. There we find Captain Talma, uncle of the tragedian, but one of the parties considers the price offered too low. This protest incited the Convention to one of its favorite practices, sending representatives on mission, in this case, Charles-François Delacroix, the father of the painter, and deputy for Marne. He professes quite extreme ideas against Versailles since he proposed razing the Palace of Versailles. His conclusions oscillate between firmness and threat: "As much as it is fair to reward the owners of Jeu-de-Paume for the courage they had in giving asylum to the precursors of freedom, it would be inappropriate and criminal to exceed the just limits that nature has prescribed to national munificence. » There is no question of raising the stakes and taking advantage of the situation, the Jeu de Paume venue is not intended to transform into a speculative market. This dispute will compromise the architectural project that accompanied this “nationalization” of the room. The expert appointed for the occasion by the National Estates, Eustache de Saint-Far, responsible for Seine-et-Oise for National and Emigrant Property, had designed a “Temple of the Oath” whose sketches can be consulted in the Archives national. A vast neo-classical portico had been envisaged, raised, and framed by a double arch opening onto the interior of the monument, with two statues marking the threshold. This opening on the north side must have been visible from afar. He wanted to demolish the surrounding houses, isolate the Temple, avoid any fire, and dig a street that would lead to the Place d'Armes, renamed Place de la Révolution. This monumentalization of the exterior was accompanied by a certain fetishization, the barrels, and planks that served as offices on June 20, 1789, having to be reproduced identically. Never has the Jeu de Paume hall been so close to achieving consecration thanks to this Saint-Far. But the affair dragged on.

No doubt the memory of the day of the Oath was fading in a France traumatized by the Terror, exhausted by wars, and disconcerted by regime changes. Six years have passed. An eternity. Referring to the Constitution of Year III (1795) which provides for the institution of patriotic holidays, the Minister of the Interior wrote to the prefecture of Seine-et-Oise to encourage it to celebrate June 20, which had become 30 meadows. But the ceremony at Versailles, announced late, was a failure. The Oath no longer excites the crowds and we come to regret the enthusiasm of 1790, when the festival organized by Romme and the Société du Serment-du-Jeu-de-Paume had aroused communal fervor. Romme, a mountain dweller, committed suicide in prison after the failure of the insurrection of May 20, 1795.

In September 1799, the former Minister of Justice, Garat, who had notified Louis XVI of his death sentence, wrote a new report for the Council of Elders where he recalled the opportunity to give in to the owners of the Salle du Jeu de Palm a national domain of equal value. He regrets the opprobrium that certain Montagnards cast on the deputies of the third of 1789, which would have dissuaded David from continuing the execution of his masterpiece. After having completed his sketch, he, for reasons both political and financial, painted five characters, then put down his brushes: his sympathies for Robespierre, which earned him his imprisonment after Thermidor, did not provide little incentive to continue a work which no longer had the support of his mountain friends. Garat urges the “immortal” David to resume his work, but the latter, who has found a new master in the person of Bonaparte, declines the proposal. In a memoir written in 1802, he justified to his "fellow subscriber citizens" the incompleteness of his painting. Clever enough to make it a strictly financial question, he says he has devoted enough time and money to it.

From one revolution to another

In September 1800, a law finally compensated the owners of the Jeu de Paume Hall. The carpet merchant negotiations have ended, but there is no longer any question of paying homage to a room that now evokes rather bad memories for the new master of France. During the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799), the deputies of the Council of Five Hundred, lured into the trap of the orangery of the Château de Saint-Cloud, indeed gave themselves courage in the face of the grenadiers of Bonaparte who threatened them, recalling the memory of the Oath. This now symbolizes resistance to tyranny which has however changed sides. They too will take an oath of loyalty, in this case to the Constitution of Year III that Sieyès, maneuvering for Bonaparte, wants to repeal. In the night following the coup d'état, while the deputies hostile to Bonaparte finally fled through the windows, he expressed concern to his brother, Lucien, president of this now scattered Assembly: "What would be our position if the Council of Five Hundred was going to return to the Jeu de Paume? » Bonaparte feared the galvanizing effect of this symbol that the deputies had summoned the day before and which was likely to become a rallying point. The hypothesis is not improbable, because Fouché having blocked access to Paris, the rebel parliamentarians could have retreated to Versailles. In a cynical reversal, Lucien reassures him: “If freedom was born in the Jeu-de-Paume of Versailles, it was consolidated in the Orangerie of Saint-Cloud. »The coup d'état put an end to the Revolution, it was logical that it should recover one of its symbolic places by obscuring it.

Bonaparte followed this logic to the end by granting the room to a painter whom he instructs, through his paintings, to glorify his action: Jacques-Antoine Gros. Friend of Joséphine de Beauharnais, whom he had met in Italy during the first campaign of 1796, Gros had ingratiated himself into the good graces of her husband, of whom he had become responsible for the spoliation of works of art on the transalpine territory. A painter, he had thought, would have the eye to fly with taste. David's favorite student, this gifted young man, who had started with the portrait of conventionalists, made a mistake by accepting the commission in 1801 for The Combat of Nazareth. This battle had the major disadvantage of highlighting one of Bonaparte's subordinates, General Junot. When he had just completed the draft, he received the order to leave his work aside to devote himself to another scene, The Plague Victims of Jaffa. This one also dated from the Egyptian campaign but had as its hero the only one worthy of being one. Gros did not hesitate to use the giant canvas promised in Nazareth for Jaffa, where Bonaparte circulated, benevolent and comforting, among the plague patients whom he had in reality massacred. Where history painting was still waiting for The Oath of David, we were entitled to adjustments from its master.

The wounded, the dying, the room welcomed some for good at the twilight of the Empire. At the end of June 1815, shortly after Waterloo, General Exelmans attempted a last stand against the Prussians near Rocquencourt. The victims were brought to Versailles where this large empty room seemed ideal for storing stretchers. The asylum of 1789 became a military hospice. And the Oath had gone out of fashion so much that in 1806, on the death of Mounier, the deputy from Grenoble who had initiated it, his obituary no longer even mentioned this feat of arms.

The Restoration dealt the final blow. Back in power, the monarchists only thought of purging the crimes of the Revolution. This Oath was the first of them and this room, the den of treachery and perjury. The galleries were destroyed. The wall overlooking the street was gutted and replaced by a large bay, still visible today. The inscription “Versailles has deserved well of the country” was removed. As for the shameful oath engraved in marble, “they swore, they kept their word”, dating from 1790, it was simply turned against the wall. The room became a warehouse for the sets and costumes of the theater of the Palace of Versailles. In 1814, people no longer gloried in having taken the oath in 1789, but on the contrary in having refused to do so, witness this relative of Martin d'Auch, the only opponent, who obtained his name taken back.

Only a new revolution could restore luster to the cradle of the first. As early as March 14, 1848, a large banquet was organized there. What could be more logical? The Republicans had made their ideas triumph by organizing banquets which circumvented the ban on meetings. We don’t just celebrate the Second Republic by toasting the ghosts of June 20. The new Minister of the Interior, who also oversees Fine Arts and Museums, Ledru-Rollin, has just issued a decree that day that classifies the Jeu de Paume room as a Historic Monument. Eight years earlier, Prosper Mérimée had drawn up the first hexagonal list of these monuments to be safeguarded. The Versailles decision is eminently political. Ledru-Rollin is a radical. A fervent supporter of universal suffrage, a forgotten precursor of radicalism and the Republican Party, he also firmly believes in the democratic role of culture. Even if its formulation is sometimes inaccurate ‒ “the place where for the first time the national will was produced with brilliance and solemnity” (1) ‒, its motivations deserve attention. Monuments classified for aesthetic reasons ‒ “precious buildings in terms of their execution or the history of art in France” ‒Ledru-Rollin adds an educational consideration for the occasion: “those whom a glorious memory recommends to the respect of the people. »The Jeu de Paume hall could become the emblem, the model of a monument intended for popular education. We find the vocation reserved for it by the rather vague decree of the Convention issued at the end of 1793. At the same time, David's sketch, the original work, entered the walls, loaned by the Louvre, and finally unrolled. The representation of the scene is compared, in situ, to its setting. Beautiful mise en abyme of the theater of history. The exhibition will be ephemeral. After the first enthusiastic months of the Second Republic, the month of June saw repression fall on the workers and the Louvre took back its property with its dangerous virtues and carefully stored it in a corner.

The Second Empire did even better than the First. The floor tiles are torn up, the walls are whitewashed, and the place is dismembered: on one side, a gambling den, on the other, just the opposite, a game of tennis attributed to a deputy chief of the police headquarters. To the remains of the Revolution, Napoleon III preferred those of Gallo-Roman Antiquity, which he had exhumed in the four corners of the territory. Ruin affects our policeman, who asks the government for compensation in vain. The condition of the room has deteriorated considerably. Will the Third Republic allow a new resurrection, more lasting than in 1848? Isn’t Versailles the capital? Following the King of Prussia crowned Emperor of the German Reich in the Hall of Mirrors, Thiers, the head of government, set up his offices at the prefecture – he will leave with the clean plates – and his successor, Mac-Mahon, takes up residence in the Hôtel de Fontenoy, a stone's throw from the Jeu de Paume venue. The place is rented to a couple, the Delattre couple, who are also the guardians of the “temple”. Its new owner, the Ministry of Public Works, seems in no hurry to find a… public use for it.

Popular education

Everything changed in 1875. The arrival of the National Assembly in Versailles meant that space had to be made within the castle. We must find a place to put the dozens of busts, statues, and tombs that must be moved. The Minister of Public Education, Ernest Wallon, who has the Fine Arts under his authority, asks his colleague from Public Works to kindly give him the room which therefore serves again as a warehouse. The only condition required and accepted by the dispossessed minister is that we have access to the monument. But no one thinks of pushing open the door of this mess of busts, of statues where we find nine statues of the Bonaparte family, as well as those of generals Pichegru and Dumouriez, not to mention twenty-nine rolls of paintings. The Protestants of Versailles, whose temple is under reconstruction, request temporary asylum in this room. This caused great excitement at the castle, which informed the competent ministries that to be able to grant this request it would first be necessary to find premises of equivalent dimensions and finance the removal of the statues and tombs kept in the room and the number of which continue to grow.

New twist in July 1879. All state institutions left Versailles for Paris. The Assemblies leaving, Édouard Charton, senator of Seine-et-Oise who lives in Versailles, where he served as prefect, realizes that the depot of the Jeu de Paume room will be able to return to the castle. Charton is a Saint-Simonian converted to publishing, the soul and linchpin of the Magazine Pittoresque, of La Bibliothèque des Merveilles, and a host of illustrated books intended for popular education, which made the glory of the 19th century. This pioneer of popularization has not forgotten the initial project of devoting the room he will save from purgatory to the edification of the people. Close to Jules Ferry, the new Minister of Public Education, he persuaded him to empty it of the works stored there to regain the appearance of yesteryear before the place definitively fell into ruin. We start by turning the plaque of the oath the right way round, which we frame with a Doric aedicula, crowned with a Gallic rooster. The marble columns come from the Dome grove in the castle garden. A statue of Bailly is added, the president brandishing a copy of the oath. A frieze now runs around the room, with the names of the 630 signatories, while twenty busts of the most eminent deputies form a small troop around Bailly. On the south gable, the decrees of 1793 and 1848 are inscribed again, while on the north gable, a giant copy of David's draft was made by Olivier Merson. The Louvre, which finally exhibited the original in 1880, refused to lend it and only entrusted it in 1921 to the Palace of Versailles, where it is currently in the Chimay penthouse. On June 20, 1883, everything was ready, or almost, to welcome Jules Ferry and his colleague from the Interior, Waldeck-Rousseau, to inaugurate a museum of the French Revolution. We are a few years ahead of the centenary of this Revolution which is on the rise in the consolidated Republic of the 1880s and whose high point must be the unveiling of the Eiffel Tower. La salle n’en est pas absente. Le 20 juin 1889, il y a une foule à Versailles où la municipalité a lancé les invitations aux villes qui avaient envoyé des députés en 1789. De nombreux maires, des députés et sénateurs en pagaille, ainsi que trois ministres, ont fait le déplacement. Pour éviter les dommages d’une cohue, on prend soin d’installer une barrière autour de la statue de Bailly. Le cortège a quitté l’hôtel de ville sous les auspices d’un gracieux lâcher de pigeons. « Trop longtemps délaissée, la salle du Jeu de Paume a été restaurée en 1883 avec un goût parfait, résume le frère Thénard, qui pour une loge versaillaise rédige un opuscule sur ces fêtes du centenaire. On lui a conservé son caractère primitif et si les murs du pourtour ne sont plus nus comme il y a un siècle, tout ce qui s'y voit rappelle, en le glorifiant, l'événement inoubliable auquel cette masure auguste a dû son illustration. »

En 1894, il faut déjà sonner à la réfection des inscriptions. Situées sur un terrain humide, les infiltrations se multiplient et accélèrent le délabrement d’un édifice fragile. Le musée de la Révolution française porte certes un nom prometteur mais un peu trompeur car il est centré sur la journée du 20 juin. En 1930, sont installées une maquette de la Bastille réalisée avec les pierres de la forteresse ainsi que des vitrines pédagogiques. Désormais rattachée au château de Versailles, la salle est alors peu visitée. Pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les vitrines sont rapportées au château où elles demeurent jusqu'à la fin des années 1950. Les hommes ayant horreur du vide, on s'avise que cet espace immense pourrait très bien accueillir… des tables de ping-pong pour les questeurs de l'Assemblée nationale qui sont logés dans des dépendances du château. D'un jeu de balles l'autre.

Tout au long des années 1950, la salle accueille des sessions d’examens pour l’aptitude professionnelle de l’Enseignement technique. La salle sert aussi de salon de peinture en 1963. En 1989, à l’occasion du 200e anniversaire de la Révolution française, elle fait l’objet d’une restauration qui permet de rafraîchir les lieux. Le 20 juin, la présidente Mitterrand y reçoit des cours de toute la France dans le cadre des commémorations du bicentenaire.

Si quelques interventions ponctuelles ont lieu dans les années 2000, la dernière restauration a été conduite entre juillet 2021 et février 2022. Le chantier a porté aussi bien sur le clos et le couvert que sur les décors intérieurs. La période de référence qui a été retenue pour cette restauration est celle de 1883 et de l’aménagement pour le musée de la Révolution française.

Le serpent

« L'Assemblée Nationale, définissant qu'appelée à fixer la constitution du royaume, opérer la régénération de l'ordre public et maintenir les vrais principes de la monarchie, rien ne peut empêcher qu'elle continue ses délibérations, dans quelque lieu qu' elle soit forcée de s'établir, et qu'enfin partout où ses membres sont réunis, là est l'Assemblée Nationale – arrête que tous les membres de cette Assemblée prêteront à l'instant serment solennel de ne jamais se séparer et de se rassembler partout où les circonstances l'exigeront, jusqu'à ce que la constitution du royaume soit établie et affermie. »

La salle du jeu de Paume

En 1789, la salle était plus sombre qu’aujourd’hui en raison des tentures noires qui permettaient de mieux voir la balle. Pas de rideaux, comme le peindra David, mais des filets pour retenir les balles. La galerie, qui accueillait à l’étage les spectateurs, sera détruite quelques années plus tard. Ironie de l’histoire, le plafond était peint en bleu, parsemé de fleurs de lys, orné en son centre des armes de France. Car si le lieu était privé, il était né sous des auspices royaux. Louis XIII, comme nombre de ses précédents, aimait à se dépenser à la paume. Il fit construire un jeu dont on a retrouvé les vestiges lors de récents travaux au château – son fils, Louis XIV, qui préférait la danse ou le théâtre, l’avait fait détruire pour édifier le Grand Commun. Si les palais royaux du Louvre, de Vincennes, de Fontainebleau, de Compiègne ou de Saint-Germain-en-Laye disposaient d'un jeu, Versailles s'en trouva ainsi dépourvu. Jean Bazin, concierge en charge de tous ces établissements, a décidé de remédier à ce manque. La chose lui fut assez aisée, il avait le privilège exclusif. Avec son gendre, Nicolas Cretté, également paumier-raquettier, il achète un terrain, non loin du château, à l'angle de la rue du Vieux-Versailles et de la rue Saint-François. C'était en 1686, l'année de la fistule anale de Louis XIV. Pour se remettre de sa maladie, Fagon, son médecin personnel, lui aurait conseillé de l’exercice physique. La légende veut que la salle ait été construite en toute hâte pour être inaugurée par le royal invité. L’endroit aurait ainsi bénéficié d’une publicité extraordinaire. Il fut ouvert en réalité le 1er janvier 1687 par le Grand Dauphin, mais sa Majesté en personne, un peu plus tard, serait venue taper quelques balles, franchissant avec plaisir une porte au-dessus de laquelle, en ronde-bosse, avait été sculptée en son hommage à un soleil rayonnant. Charles Perrault, dans ses Mémoires, atteste de cette présence pour la regretter : dans une salle adjacente, le roi, après s'être réchauffé au jeu, se faisait frictionner dans une promiscuité de mauvais aloi. Par la suite, la salle connaît les aléas de l’engouement pour ce sport, qui fut variable. Après avoir souffert d’un certain désintérêt, le jeu de paume redevient à la mode sous Louis XVI. Son frère, le comte d'Artois, futur Charles X, y est un « joueur de seconde force », autrement dit redoutable, ce qui oblige son cousin, le duc de Chartres, qui régnera sous le nom de Louis-Philippe, à tricher pour gagner. On prend des paris, on y dépense des sommes considérables, le lieu est populaire. En 1789, le propriétaire n'est autre que Jean-Paul Talma, l'oncle du célèbre comédien, tandis que le gérant réserve le meilleur accueil aux députés du tiers qui, avertis par le bouche-à-oreille, arrivent toujours plus de nombreux au fil de la matinée de ce 20 juin.

L'avenir du tableau

Après la mort de David en 1825, l'ébauche du Serment fut récupérée par ses héritiers. Lors de la première vente de ses œuvres, en 1835, elle ne trouve pas preneur. Un an plus tard, les musées royaux en font l’acquisition pour le Louvre. Mais elle n’est pas exposée et végétale enveloppée. Et si la monarchie de Juillet, qui ouvre au château de Versailles un musée de l’histoire de France, brille par l’art de la synthèse et de la réconciliation, la salle n’en bénéficie pas. Louis-Philippe batailla certes dans les troupes de la Révolution jusqu’en 1792, mais en ce lieu il avait triché au jeu de paume contre le futur Charles X et on l’avait pris sur le fait. Tout juste lui redonna-t-il l’usage que Napoléon lui avait naguère réservé : celui d’atelier d’artiste. L’heureux bénéficiaire fut cette fois Horace Vernet qui eu à immortaliser pour le musée du Château des victoires du régime où s’était illustré le fils du roi, le duc d’Aumale. Elles nécessitaient des toiles à la mesure du triomphe. Après Jaffa, ce fut donc La prise de la Smalah, le plus grand tableau, en dimensions, du XIXe siècle. La salle, vaste par destination, était condamnée aux superproductions picturales.