The Equestrian Carrousel

Every Thursday I hop out of bed and head for my weekly horseback ride in the Bois de Boulogne.  In so doing, I partake of a centuries-old popular French past time, desending from kings and pageantry, armed battles and plumed musketeers.  In today’s class, my fellow cavaliers and I were asked to perform an equestrian carrousel, a mounted dance in which riders and horses execute precision movements in tandem, often in time with music.  Curious about the history of this tradition, my friends and I interviewed our instructor after our lesson, while sipping Moet & Chandon champagne... but I’ll get back to that in a minute!

The mounted spectacle, known in French as le carrousel, seems to have come from 16^th century Renaissance Italy, from the house of the Medici in Florence.  It first appeared at the French court in the early 1600’s to mark royal weddings or important state visits.  One famed equestrian ballet, choreographed by Louis XIII’s instructor, Antoine de Pluvinel, is still remembered and performed today.  Le Carrousel du Roi debuted in 1612 to celebrate the engagement of young Louis XIII to his future wife, Anne of Austria.

The carrousel typically took place in a royal square or courtyard where elaborately costumed riders from the king’s cavalry or private guard carried out choreographed routines symbolic of the moves horsemen used in battle.  Even today, in the resulting riding tradition called dressage, rider and mount approach then side step away from one another, ride in criss-crossing lines, move across the arena - as in the battlefield - nose to nose in a perfect line, and form shapes with an accuracy reflective of a well-trained mount and his even better-trained cavalier.  In the days of kings, these demonstrations often took place at night, with riders carrying torches.  They were almost always accompanied by the music of court composers, such as Lully.

The Place du Carrousel in front of the Louvre in Paris acquired its named when Louis XIV used it for an equestrian ballet in 1662. 

Today’s Garde Républicaine, a prestigious mounted division of the French police, traces its origins back to the musketeers of Alexandre Dumas fame, the private forces employed to protect the kings, and cardinals, of France. 

Garde Républicaine carrousel "La Maison Du Roi"
envoyé par LoveHorse95. - Découvrez les dernières tendances en vidéo.

Now about that champagne:  Another French tradition, at least at my riding club, states that whenever a rider takes a fall, he or she is obliged to bring champagne to the next class.  Hence, our morning lesson in French history accompanied by a lovely bubbly!



Paris Monuments - The Palais Royal

One of my favorite Paris places is the garden of the Palais Royal, a gem hiding in plain sight right in the middle of town. Indeed, I’m embarrassed to admit that I had already lived here for two years before stumbling on it, having just missed it any number of times while visiting the Musée du Louvre or taking in a show at the Comédie Française. It was like finding an urban Shangri-la!

The Palais Royal was first known as the Palais Cardinal, the home of Cardinal Richelieu, chief advisor to King Louis XIII (and some say the real power behind the throne). He built his beautiful home just across the street from the king who lived at the Palais du Louvre back when that part of today's 1st arrondissement sat at the very edge of the city (see map of Paris 1789).

On December 4, 1642, Cardinal Richelieu died. He left his palace to his friend, the king. But Louis XIII never had a chance to use it, for he died just five months later. His son and heir to the throne, Louis XIV, was then only four years old, much too young to run a country. So young Louis' mother, Anne of Austria, ruled in his name as Regent until he was old enough to take the crown. She didn’t like the draughty then-300-year-old Louvre Palace, so she moved the boy King and his little brother, Philippe Duc d’Orleans, to the more modern Palais Cardinal. Because members of the royal family were now living in the palace, its name was changed to the Palais Royal.

On his 13th birthday, in September 1652, Louis XIV declared himself King. He moved back to the Louvre Palace, where he lived for 30 years before transferring his family and the entire French government to Versailles in 1682. The Palais Royal remained the home of his younger brother, Philippe Duc d’Orleans. It would stay in the hands of the Orleans branch of the royal family for the next 150 years. By 1789, the Palais Royal was home to Philippe’s great-grandson, Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans, the first cousin of King Louis XVI and royal member of the new National Assembly.

During their first century-and-a-half, the gardens of the Palais Royal were private, enclosed by the backs of houses that grew up around them but faced the outer lying streets. Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans changed that. From 1781-84, he transformed the gardens from a private domain into a popular Parisian social center, creating France’s first-ever public shopping arcade.

The truth is: the Duc d’Orleans needed money. He was a notorious gambler and he squandered the Orleans family fortune building a private pleasure garden (now called the Parc Monceau) to rival Marie Antoinette’s hameau at Versailles. So, he built this new housing and shopping complex around the perimeter of the Palais Royal gardens, and he did something never before done in France: He sold or rented the apartment spaces to people from all levels of French society, with large apartments for the wealthy on the first level, and smaller, more affordable apartments as you reached the roof. He rented the ground-floor gallery spaces to cafés, smart shops, theatres, restaurants, even a few gambling casinos.

He encouraged printing presses to open at the Palais Royal, too; presses that published and distributed journals and broadsheets expressing the Enlightenment views the king and his council considered so treasonous.

But because these were royal grounds, the king’s police were not permitted to enter the property. By royal edict, neither Louis-Philippe, nor those who printed rebellious literature at the Palais Royal, could be censored. It was thanks to these broadsheets that people outside Paris kept up-to-date with the events taking place in the French capital in 1789.

In a few short years Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans turned the Palais Royal into the place to be in Paris! Since their opening, the gardens were crowded both day and night. One journal wrote that if you threw an apple from an apartment window it would never hit the ground – that’s how thick the crowd could be! Café tables and chairs spilled out into the gardens at all hours. Circus acts and street performers entertained the crowds. Parisians as well as visitors from the provinces and abroad came to the Palais Royal to shop, gamble, drink, mingle, and discuss the ideas of Enlightenment philosophy without threat of censorship or imprisonment.

It was also where, in 1789, it was very fashionable to talk of Revolution. Thus it is said that the French Revolution started at the Palais Royal, the home of the King Louis XVI's own cousin!

***

Coming soon: Camille Desmoulins incites the crowd at the Palais Royal. Stay tuned.

Images:

Photo from the Palais Royal gardens by Beckstet , courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photo of the former Palais Cardinal, now the French Conseil d'Etat, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of the boy king, Louis XIV, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Engraving of the Palais Royal, courtesy of The Costumer's Manifesto: http://www.costumes.org/history/18thcent/lacroix/chrome10.jpg.

 

Source:
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine, in development.