Chambord Therefore Suffered From
Royal Indifference, Though In The Last Century A Use
Was Found For Its Deserted Halls.
In 1725 it was oc-
cupied by the luckless Stanislaus Leszczynski, who
spent the greater part of his life
In being elected
King of Poland and being ousted from his throne,
and who, at this time a refugee in France, had found
a compensation for some of his misfortunes in marry-
ing his daughter to Louis XV. 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.
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