“The most difficult man in the kingdom to amuse” passions and entertainments of Louis XV

“It is a hidden character, not only impenetrable in its secret but very often in the movements that take place in its soul. The king’s temperament is neither lively nor cheerful; there would even be something atrabiliary; violent exercise and dissipation are necessary for him,” observed the Duke of Luynes on July 26, 1743. The Duke of Croÿ and Count Jean-Nicolas Dufort de Cheverny also testify, to varying degrees, to an inscrutable king on whom seems to weigh a heavy pall of sadness. Much more than an ordinary distraction from curial life, entertainment was for Louis XV a “necessary dissipation” for his bored mind. The king thus alternated periods of intense activity and others where nothing seemed to reach him: "greed for new pleasures, disgust, and boredom, the sensitivity of the moment, general and absolute apathy which succeeds it", summarizes the Marquis d' Argenson in a concise manner (1)”.

This saturnine character was the expression of a deep melancholy born from the bruises of his childhood. The only child to survive the terrible massacre which decimated, in less than two years, the three generations of presumptive heirs of Louis the ardent chapels around the coffins which followed one another, the picture of his parents lying side by side on their parade bed before being taken together to the royal necropolis of Saint-Denis, the nocturnal marches to the sound of De Profundis, the apartments and even the castle gates, covered in black or purple for a whole season, sometimes even for a year. In 1716, his governess the Duchess of Ventadour, whom the little king called “Maman Ventadour”, wrote to Madame de Maintenon this prophetic remark: “Naturally he is not cheerful, and great pleasures will be harmful to him because they 'will apply too much (2)'; often pushed to excess, these “great pleasures” were so many ways of escaping from oneself. The archives and testimonies of those who met him closely allow us to lift the veil on the passions and leisure activities of this enigmatic sovereign. Was Louis )”?

“Violent exercises”: hunts and sled races

Rarely has a monarch hunted so much. From his first hunt with hounds, in September 1721 with the Duke of Bourbon in the park of Vanves, until his last outing thirteen days before his death, Louis XV devoted himself to hunting with particular ardor: at least three days per week - from 1751 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays -, sometimes five and almost daily from September to November when he resided in Fontainebleau or Compiègne. Practicing both types of hunting, shooting and hounds, hunting was in his favor, and he much preferred to let off steam in the open air in the woods and experience the fatigue of long rides in bad weather, braving the rain, the fog and the frosts, rather than attending the theatrical performances given by Madame de Pompadour in the apartments: “The King rarely goes to any comedy; he chases deer at least three times a week, and wild boar from time to time,” noted Luynes on February 5, 1737. Louis XV did not view hunting as simple entertainment: it was above all the technical aspect that fascinated him. Endowed with great physical endurance, masterfully directing his pack of hounds as well as the dozens of mounted officers who followed him, he was endowed with very sure instincts and proved to be an outstanding tracker, capable for example, to accurately analyze a trace left by an animal. His trophies are impressive: “He did me the honor of telling me that a few days previously,” says Luynes, “on a similar hunt, he had killed 60 animals in half an hour; he only missed four shots (4).” In 1750, the sovereign slaughtered 318 pheasants and partridges in three hours, and the following year, 130 in two and a half hours. Hunting with hounds, it is estimated that the king alone took nearly 8,000 deer during his reign, an average of 100 to 150 per year.

Already as a teenager, Louis XV indulged in hunting pleasure with a frenzy unusual for his age. In June 1724, the lawyer Mathieu Marais noted in his Journal: “The King is tall, strong, always hunting, in the rain, in the dust, in the sun, and hardly cares about tiring his officers or his courtiers. » The excessive nature of his practice was also noted by Edmond-Jean-François Barbier: “The King only thinks about hunting,” he noted in August of the same year, before wondering, later, about the deep character of this king who “is always running, and one can say without knowing why… (5)”. Experiencing oneself physically, and expending intense energy is a way of running away from oneself.

A hunter but also a frenzied leader! In the same way, the young sovereign sought the thrills of high speed during his famous sled races at Versailles, organized during very frosty winters. Thus he transformed the traditional sleigh rides of the previous reign, into real wild races where the participants, generally seventeen or eighteen, were encouraged to "cut", that is to say, to pass at full speed in front of each other to overturn each other, the spectacular falls, and the laughter they generated, livening up the royal entertainment. Louis XV was renowned for driving his sleigh at full speed to the point that no lady dared to ride with him. On January 3, 1739, the Duchess of Orléans, already elderly, declined the king's invitation arguing "that she was too old" and preferred to go with the Duke of Villeroy, but Mme de Mailly, who had neither the rank nor the prudence to refuse, almost died of fright "and thought he would feel bad at the speed with which the king was going", testifies Luynes, on January 21, 1740. The races thus lasted all afternoon and sometimes until late in the night. On January 7, 1732, the Mercure reported: “The king took the entertainment of a sleigh race […]; having changed relays twice, the king then led the company to Trianon, where it had the honor of supper with H.M. who did not return to Versailles until around two o'clock in the morning by the light of the moon. »

“His Majesty only breathes with plans and drawings on his table” (Marquis d’Argenson)

In the field of the arts, the king had a predilection for buildings and this passion, Marshal de Villars congratulated himself, allowed him to combine glory with entertainment. From François I to Louis XIV via Henri IV, Louis XV is the heir to a long tradition of building monarchs. He launched ambitious projects, first and foremost those of the royal houses: the “Grand project” of reconstruction of Versailles (never carried out), the total transformation of Compiègne, the construction of a new wing in Fontainebleau, of the Pavillon de Saint -Hubert, of La Muette, of the little château of Choisy and the Petit Trianon, the last illustrating better than any other his openness to new developments in the “Greek” style. His reign was also marked by an ambitious program of public constructions such as the Place Louis, the new Sainte-Geneviève church by Jacques-Germain Soufflot (current Panthéon), the Hôtel de la Monnaie de Paris by Jacques Denis Antoine and the School of Surgery designed by Jacques Gondoin.

Like his great-grandfather, Louis XV was an “architect king”, having “the compass in his eye” to use Saint-Simon’s expression. He was indeed distinguished by his technical knowledge, being able to easily carry on a conversation with "people in the trade", and judge or rectify as an expert a point submitted to him. Because it was the architectural practice itself, and not just buildings, that fascinated him. His friends confirm that drawing up plans remained his favorite pastime all his life, a taste that he shared with Madame de Pompadour at the head of a real estate portfolio of a unique magnitude in the 18th century for a woman, a favorite, a queen herself. Like Louis, We worked all day cutting down a grove. He took the billhook from my hand to cut it down himself, which he did like a strong and skillful man", relates the Duke of Croÿ, on January 25, 1752. This passion was favored by the relationship of trust that bound him, for thirty-two years, to Ange-Jacques Gabriel, its first architect, who enjoyed the privilege of being housed in an apartment located in the cap of the Salon de la Paix, near the sovereign. Louis XV liked to retire alone with him to work on the plans: “The king continually has his buildings drawn in front of him, in particular the young Gabriel,” observed the Marquis d’Argenson in 1739 (6); "S.M. has a lot of kindness for him, and he very often works alone with the King on plans and projects," Luynes confirmed on May 1, 1742.

Louis XV annotated the plans submitted to him by his architect, sometimes even sketching out projects himself. Thus, on January 9, 1773, Gabriel wrote to the Marquis de Marigny, Superintendent of Buildings: “The king gave me yesterday an idea that he traced on paper to enlarge the accessories of the Bellevue pavilion […] he ordered me to make a plan that could fulfill his ideas (7). » The king indeed had "the talent for drawing" according to the Duke of Argenson (8), and he had an architect's kit consisting of a square, a large compass, a 3-inch compass, a small, simple 4-inch compass, a money protractor, an ebony stand, pencil holders and clipboards, delivered by the famous scientific instrument maker Jean-Jacques Langlois ( 9).

On January 18, 1754, the Duke of Croÿ recounted an unusual scene: while he mentioned to the Duke of Ayen his project to build a hunting lodge on his land (10), Louis XV joined in the discussion and immediately began to draw the ideal plan: “The King asked what we were saying. The Duke of Ayen said that we were talking about the countryside, that I had a charming one with Condé, who was starting to make a big noise. […] The King asked me how it was, I said that it was a forest and that the house would have to be rebuilt in the center of a crossroads of four roads, at a right angle I was embarrassed by the drawings because I wanted a living room in the middle which looked out on four sides without disturbing anything, and pretty accommodation in the four corners, which had a view of the roads. The King liked the plans and the building. He took me to his pretty pavilion in the Trianon gardens [the French pavilion], and pointed out to me that it was in this taste that I had to build, and this is what most fulfilled my object. He ordered Mr. Gabriel to give me two plans that they had made together in the same style, and, asking for paper and pencil, I made him a sketch of my position. He drew these ideas for a long time himself and with Mr. Gabriel, returning to this position for which he seemed to be interested (that was what I wanted) for a long time. »

Science: his deepest passion

“I saw that the King really loved the sciences,” Croÿ testifies, meaning that Louis XV loved the sciences not as a sovereign – his role was to protect and encourage them – but rather out of personal taste, from a very young age. Under the influence of the Regent who intended to make Paris the scientific capital of Europe, he benefited, from the age of seven, from a methodical education provided by the greatest scientists. He was passionate about astronomy, geography, geometry and then botany, physics, chemistry, optics and electricity. The child king was amazed by his discovery, on June 10, 1716, of the Paris Observatory then, on February 21, 1717, of the office of the infantry colonel and engineer of Hermand, and by that, on the following July 25, from the famous physics office of Pajot d'Ons-en-Bray in Bercy, near La Râpée (11).

Five years later, in April 1722, he went to the college of Harcourt to attend the lessons of Pierre Polinière, founder of experimental science in France and pioneer of research on electric light. At Trianon, on May 22, 1724, he witnessed a total solar eclipse with Jacques Cassini and Giacomo Maraldi. The two astronomers brought a second clock, a quarter circle, a parallactic machine, two glasses, one of which had a micrometer, and the king had a thermometer and a barometer transported from his cabinets to observe variations in temperature and pressure. of the air during the phenomenon, while Mr. Meynier, a Provençal hydrographer, represented to him on a moving sphere “the different positions of the stars in relation to each other”. As Cassini testifies in his Memoirs, the king did not let "any of the interesting phenomena that happen in the sky (12) escape", and multiplied the observations, at Versailles, Compiègne (solar eclipse, July 25, 1748), Bellevue (passage of Mercury on the Sun, May 16, 1753) or Saint-Hubert (passage of Venus, June 6, 1761).

This king, who was said to be disillusioned, showed himself, in matters of science, to be tirelessly curious about new discoveries. Distant and laconic with the courtiers, he established endless conversations with the scientists with whom he loved to surround himself: the astronomers Jacques and César-François Cassini, the brothers Pierre-Charles and Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier, the an astronomer and the other a doctor and botanist, surgeons La Peyronie and La Martinière, the latter enjoying the esteem and friendship of the king, the Count of Buffon, Jussieu and, among the courtiers, the Duke of Chaulnes, a renowned scientist, inventor of precision instruments. As usual, Louis XV proved to be knowledgeable and capable, according to the Duke of Croÿ, of understanding and verifying the functioning of complex devices.

The king himself owned the most beautiful scientific instruments, masterpieces of the arts and sciences, first and foremost the famous astronomical clock placed on January 15, 1754 in Versailles in the cabinet that bears his name, the two moving globes of the pavilion de La Muette and a pair of state-of-the-art microscopes, all created by engineer Claude-Siméon Passemant and sculptor and bronzeworker Philippe Caffiéri. The inventory of June 6, 1774 lists the sovereign's personal scientific instruments which he had for his leisure, kept in the cabinets of his large interior cabinet (corner cabinet) and his wardrobe, such as "seven cases of mathematics” in gold lacquer and diamonds, probably ordered from Nicolas Bion, “a small portable silver barometer”, “a telescope garnished with silver”, “a graphometer in a red morocco case” and the large dial equinoctial solar with mechanical minutes invented by Julien Le Roy.

In a moving passage, the Duke of Croÿ reveals that sciences were not only a distraction for Louis XV but a refuge when anxiety overwhelmed him, such as on December 20, 1765, at the time of the death of his only son the dauphin. The “black pain” plunged the king into a deadly silence from which only Cassini managed to rouse him: “The King had brought him to distract himself, sciences being, in such a case, along with piety, the only distraction of beautiful souls but the futile courtiers ridiculed this. He astonished me by what he told me of the science and accuracy with which the King himself made the most difficult observations and verified the beautiful instrument that M. de Chaulnes had invented. He assured me that the calculations and the most accurate observations were familiar to him […]. But what struck me much more was what M. de Cassini told me, with the vehemence of feeling, of the black sorrow of the king […], M. de Cassini, who remained in the cabinets, saw him lying in an armchair, death in the soul (13). »

The King's Towers

The art of turning, that is to say of sculpting a piece of wood or ivory rotated on a machine tool called a lathe, was for Louis XV an Ingres violin. From the age of twelve and throughout his reign, he devoted himself with passion to this refined way of “dissolving loners and amusing princes,” according to the Encyclopedia article. In Versailles, as in most royal residences, he arranged numerous rooms intended for this purpose. The Tour required excellent knowledge of mathematics and geometry. Louis In October of the same year, Pajot d'Ons-en-Bray offered the young king his first tower which was installed at the Tuileries Palace in a "wooden cabinet" set up in the throne room. Le Mercure specifies that he filmed for the first time on October 10, 1721 and that he “shows great skill and taste in this amusement”. The Tour became one of his favorite recreations.

As soon as he settled in Versailles in June 1722, he had a first room of the Tour set up in two small rooms located in the attic of the castle, on the second floor of the Cour des Cerfs then known as "of Mgr the Count of Toulouse". From 1722 to 1774, there were thirteen pieces of the Tour, successive or additional, the machines being fixed or mobile from one piece to another (14). Tour offices were also set up in other royal residences: in 1737 in Fontainebleau (the latter changing locations several times until 1769), in 1738 in Marly, in 1751 and 1764 in Compiègne. These small rooms were the exclusive domain of the king who liked to relax and live there as a private individual. He only admitted a few privileged people, such as, in December 1748 at Versailles, the Duke of Croÿ: “The king was charming in this small interior, with infinite ease and even politeness. […] In the tower room, he lit a fagot and made us all sit around him, without the slightest distinction, and we talked with the greatest familiarity, so that we could not forget that we were with his master. »

Assisted by Jeanne-Madeleine Maubois, Louis XV created many pieces with his own hands which he enjoyed making as presents. Thus, on March 17, 1738, the Duke of Penthièvre received a master key from the castle which had belonged to his father, the Count of Toulouse, which the king placed in a case turned by himself in a wood which had also belonged to the Count of Toulouse. At the New Year's Eve of 1739, the sovereign offered several snuff boxes of his creation: "He turned some of them which he presented to his courtiers, and everyone wanted to have them. » Likewise, the following year, he offered Madame de Mailly a turned ivory toothpick case which the latter enjoyed showing off: she “played around a lot with it”, says Luynes. His technical mastery continued to develop, so much so that in 1770 he was able to execute pieces of great virtuosity, such as two elegant openwork ivory clocks with particularly complex designs, real tours de force which he offered to the young dauphine Marie-Antoinette, as well as her daughter Madame Adélaïde.

The Gardener King

Botany was undoubtedly the passion to which he devoted the most time. He was introduced to the knowledge of plants during his childhood by his doctor Guillaume Lemonnier. On March 24, 1719, the Duke of Antin had “twenty-eight crystal bells which had just arrived from the Nevers factory installed for his attention, on the terrace in front of his apartment in the Tuileries. The King, at the end of his studies, having seen these bells, immediately had earth and flower onions brought, and a white apron which he had tied around his person, then he began to work like a gardener. profession and to plant these onions and these flowers, which he covered with these bells (15). » As an adult, Louis there is much planted there; he is busy with his house and his garden as an individual is with his country house (16). » In Choisy, from 1754, he had increasingly sophisticated greenhouses set up in order to cultivate pineapples on almost industrial proportions. In 1765, the gardener Alexander Brown, specially called from England, proposed to the king a new revolutionary greenhouse whose work, with the outbuildings, masonry, earthworks, sheds, enclosure walls, frames and oilcloth blinds, reached the astronomical sum of 60,000 pounds (17).

At Trianon, the sovereign asked his gardener Claude Richard to set up a veritable botanical laboratory made up of more than 4,000 varieties of the rarest shrubs, plants, flowers, fruits and vegetables from all continents, organized according to the so-called classification. “natural” improving that of the famous Swedish botanist Carl von Linné (fig. 5 As testified by the Duke of Croÿ on February 1, 1754, one of the favorite pleasures of Louis XV was to make “the ordinary tour of his hothouses”, to check the good development of a plant, converse with Richard, learn about the research carried out, appreciate, always as an expert, the results obtained and suggest a new experiment. The sovereign spent hours there "on returning from hunting" and even in the middle of winter "despite the snow and the great cold." A ruinous new leisure activity for the Treasury, specifies Croÿ, which "cost immensely, without doing anything beautiful to stay", not to mention "that we did almost as much at each house of both the King and the Marquise”.

Coffee trees and chicken coops

In the large greenhouses of Trianon, the Jasminum Arabicum Coffea arabica, that is to say the Arabian coffee tree, had become perfectly acclimatized and produced a good quantity of annual beans that the king enjoyed roasting himself. He took pleasure in preparing and serving his own coffee to his daughters and those around him. “We sat at the table for two hours, with great freedom, and without any excess. Then the King passed into the small living room. He heated it and poured his coffee himself,” says Croÿ on January 30, 1747.

On June 5 of the following year, the Duke of Luynes had the honor of receiving the sovereign in his castle of Dampierre: “He was in a very good mood during the supper and seemed to find it good; he stayed at the table until a quarter past eleven. He took his coffee after leaving the table; it’s coffee he makes himself; he had started it before supper, and finished it while he was at the table. » On three dimensioned plans preserved in the National Archives, respectively dated around 1760, after 1760 and 1764 (18), we can clearly see the place where Louis XV prepared his coffee: located first in a passage opening through a window onto the small courtyard of the King, near his study (corner cabinet) and his wardrobe (adjoining the Cabinet des Dépêches), the stove for the coffee was moved into the narrow corridor on the first floor connecting the Golden Cabinet to the dining room of Returns from Hunting (future geography gallery of Louis XVI) (19). In this gallery called the Tour and Café Room, you can clearly see, in front of the first window, in the window recess, the two-burner stove for coffee. The stove subsequently changed location several times, as evidenced by the inventories mentioning numerous “Old Café Rooms”.

Above his offices around the Cour des Cerfs, the king enjoyed walking on the green terraces, and even on the roofs. He used it to move more quickly from one office to another, not hesitating to go through the windows and make conversation through the chimneys! On July 5, 1737, the Duke of Luynes testified: “For some time now he has been going up after supper to the roofs of the castle, and walking with those who had the honor of supper with him to the end of the new wing and from there to that of the Princes' wing. Several times he went to talk to Madame de Chalais, through a window overlooking the roof, and to Madame de Tallard, through the chimney. » Descending from the roofs by an open window or by a ladder, he sometimes found himself stuck behind a barred window: “Last Monday,” continues Luynes, “he returned again to the same chimney of Madame de Tallard, and having wanted to go down by the same window, he found the bars put in place. He sent for a cleaver, which was the nearest thing that could be found; but it was in vain that we tried to make an opening..."

In the spring of 1748, at the level of the fourth floor, on the eastern terrace of the deer courtyard, he had dovecotes-chicken coops established, named “aviary” on the plans. Enlarged the following year, they consisted of elegant trellis buildings, a vestibule, two aviary galleries with a floor covered in clay and a mesh sky allowing the chickens and pigeons to frolic happily, and a large half-timbered dovecote-chickenhouse pavilion covered with trellises (20). Passionate about zoology and the improvement of breeds, Louis other from the French Pavilion. Located near the “laboratories,” the hanging henhouses of Versailles offered the king the advantage of having fresh eggs nearby. The whole thing was abolished in 1755.

The little game

If the weekly apartment evenings established by Louis Spain or, in 1770, the marriage of the future Louis XVI to Marie-Antoinette. Orchestrated like a real spectacle, the King's Game brought together "a prodigious crowd" in the Hall of Mirrors illuminated for the occasion. Private play or “little play,” which took place in the closets of the inner apartment, was more common. Louis XV played three times a week, during dinners after returning from hunting. The guests, around fifteen on average, played a game of billiards while waiting for supper and, around midnight, reached the Pendule cabinet where the gaming tables were set up for three of a kind, l'ombre, piquet or quadrille. The comet, the cavagnole and the lansquenet were favored by the king.

On January 30, 1747, the Duke of Croÿ reported: “He played a game of Comète with Madame de Pompadour, Coigny, Madame de Brancas and the Comte de Noailles, a little game that the King loved, but Madame de Pompadour hated him and seemed to be looking for to keep him away. […] I remained leaning on the screen, watching him play and Madame de Pompadour, urging him to retire and falling asleep, he got up at one o'clock, and said to her half-loudly, it seems to me, and merrily Come on! Let's go to bed! »Luynes confirms: “The King comes to the drawing room to play a game of comet; he plays the owl to M. de la Vallière and M. de Luxembourg (21). » The gardens were also the setting for games of all kinds: in the spring of 1725, the king had a mall built along a wall of the Palace of Versailles; at La Muette, he had an escarpolette installed and at Choisy, a goose game formed by groves cut at support height, planted in March 1740 on the model of that of Chantilly.

Scheherazade

Distracting the king, overcoming his chronic boredom, this was also the adversary that the Marquise de Pompadour faced for nearly twenty years. In accomplishing this desperate task of stealing the king from himself, of overcoming his profound disenchantment, she deployed prodigious energy, increasing the rhythm of operas, comedies and concerts, working to constantly change her horizon. , multiplying the “small trips” to Choisy, la Muette, Bellevue, Crécy and Trianon, in the meantime “big trips” to Compiègne, Fontainebleau and Marly. “The marquise and her entourage hold the king in such volubility of movement that His Majesty barely has a moment of reflection,” testifies the Marquis d’Argenson (22).

Like Scheherazade with Sultan Shahryar, she tried to keep perpetually awake "the most difficult man in the kingdom to amuse", according to the expression of Dufort de Cheverny, with new pleasures and entertainments that she seemed capable of reinvent endlessly. Sometimes at the risk of overdoing it and making a misstep. Thus on September 1, 1748, in her castle of La Celle, Madame de Pompadour organized a nighttime party of extraordinary proportions for the king: “This party was extremely pretty,” says Luynes; all the different entertainments were performed with so much precision that we passed successively from one to the other without interval. However, the King appeared to take little part in it and was very serious, which was extremely noticed.” In fact, the marquise did not wish to inform him of the party “to give him a pleasant surprise; it is claimed that this is what does not succeed with the King (23).” Because if the king loved "new pleasures", he was "strong in habit" and hated surprises... When finally, in 1751, she decided to cease all carnal relations with Louis XV, the latter got bogged down, with the Park -aux-Cerfs, in the excesses of ephemeral, lackluster loves, as a new remedy for his melancholy. In vain, Louis XV remains “a bored King,” summarizes the Duke of Croÿ, “a being isolated in the middle of the crowd and for whom the crowd is nobody (24). »