He Lived Eight Years
At Chambord, And Filled Up The Moats Of The Castle.
In 1748 It Found An Illustrious
Tenant in the person
of Maurice de Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, who, how-
ever, two years after he had
Taken possession of it,
terminated a life which would have been longer had
he been less determined to make it agreeable. The
Revolution, of course, was not kind to Chambord.
It despoiled it in so far as possible of every vestige
of its royal origin, and swept like a whirlwind through
apartments to which upwards of two centuries had
contributed a treasure of decoration and furniture. In
that wild blast these precious things were destroyed
or forever scattered. In 1791 an odd proposal was
made to the French Government by a company of
English Quakers who had conceived the bold idea of
establishing in the palace a manufacture of some
peaceful commodity not to-day recorded. Napoleon
allotted Chambord, as a "dotation," to one of his
marshals, Berthier, for whose benefit it was converted,
in Napoleonic fashion, into the so-called principality
of Wagram. By the Princess of Wagram, the marshal's
widow, it was, after the Restoration, sold to the
trustees of a national subscription which had been
established for the purpose of presenting it to the in-
fant Duke of Bordeaux, then prospective King of
France. The presentation was duly made; but the
Comte de Chambord, who had changed his title in
recognition of the gift, was despoiled of his property
by the Government of Louis Philippe. He appealed
for redress to the tribunals of his country; and the
consequence of his appeal was an interminable litiga-
tion, by which, however, finally, after the lapse of
twenty-five years, he was established in his rights. In
1871 he paid his first visit to the domain which had
been offered him half a century before, a term of
which he had spent forty years in exile. It was from
Chambord that he dated his famous letter of the 5th
of July of that year, - the letter, directed to his so-
called subjects, in which he waves aloft the white
flag of the Bourbons. This amazing epistle, which is
virtually an invitation to the French people to re-
pudiate, as their national ensign, that immortal tricolor,
the flag of the Revolution and the Empire, under
which they have, won the glory which of all glories
has hitherto been dearest to them, and which is as-
sociated with the most romantic, the most heroic, the
epic, the consolatory, period of their history, - this
luckless manifesto, I say, appears to give the measure
of the political wisdom of the excellent Henry V. It
is the most factitious proposal ever addressed to an
eminently ironical nation.
On the whole, Chambord makes a great impression;
and the hour I was, there, while the yellow afternoon
light slanted upon the September woods, there was a
dignity in its desolation. It spoke, with a muffled
but audible voice, of the vanished monarchy, which
had been so strong, so splendid, but to-day has be-
come a sort of fantastic vision, like the cupolas and
chimneys that rose before me.
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