Histoire du château / History of the castle

 

Le Règne de Louis XVI vit la disparition du temple de Flore du jardin de Diane, vengeance stupide de Marie Antoinette contre la comtesse du Barry, favorite du défunt roi. On redécora le salon des reines, on doubla la Galerie de Diane. En novembre 1786, le roi quitta Fontainebleau pour n'y jamais revenir.

La Révolution vit l'incendie de l'Orangerie, puis en 1792 on envisagea le lotissement du Château avec le percement de rues. Un receveur du Domaine national, Adam, s'opposa victorieusement à ce stupide projet. Le château fit en cette période troublée office de prison politique pour des prêtres réfractaires. On y installa aussi des écoliers et un dépôt de troupes.

 

Louis XVI’s reign saw the removal of the Flore temple from Diana’s Garden, a senseless act of revenge by Marie Antoinette against the Countess of Barry, the late king’s favourite. The Queens’ salon was redecorated and Diana’s Gallery was doubled. The king left Fontainebleau in November 1786, never to return.

During the Revolution the Orangerie was burned down. Then in 1792 there was a project to split the palace into lots with streets driven through. A tax officer of the National Estates, Adam, managed to triumph in his opposition to this foolish project. In these troubled times the palace served as a political prison for priests resisting the Revolution. It also became housing for schoolchildren and as a depot for troops.

Prompted by the best of intentions, but of limited intelligence and indecisive in nature, he was ill equipped to confront the difficult circumstances that the country was going through and the people’s sentiments that were welling up, generated by his predecessor’s mistakes. He paid the ultimate price of the errors and abuses of a reign he had taken no part in, by being guillotined under the Revolution in January 1793.reign

LOUIS XVI 1774-1793

Animé des meilleures intentions, mais d'intelligence courte et irrésolu de caractère, il était mal armé pour affronter les circonstances difficiles que traversa le pays et le ressentiment populaire venu des fautes de son prédécesseur.
Il expia les erreurs et les abus d'un règne auquel il n'avait pas eu de part sous guillotine de la Révolution en Janvier 1793.