10 THE SHAPE OF GARDENS, , AND MODERN URBAN1SM

N THE LAST CHAPTER, I discussed the than one occasion that he would be glad word pourtraiture as it was employed in to receive it from him, but that gift was > the garden treatises of the seventeenth never made. Perhaps Louis wanted it so century and suggested that, through the much precisely because it embodied what methodical adjustment of geometry to he, despite his gloire, had never really ex­ scale that it was intended to describe, gar­ perienced firsthand: direct military vic­ den architects did draw, in fact, a "por­ tory, its special release and incomparable trait" of the.order of the world upon its satisfactions. As a field commander, Louis surface. At the same time, the word pour­ was never quite able to close with the traiture may be thought to enemy. The one chance he have a double meaning, had to do so he let slip since each of the gardens through his fingers. Unlike was intended to portray the the Due d'Enghien, who character of its client and to won his victory at Rocroi embody his own intentions. through reckless personal At Vaux, it was clearly the daring, Louis, despite his will of Fouquet as an indi­ often-demonstrated physi­ vidual that was portrayed cal courage, was never quite and embodied in landscape. able to let himself go in that At Versailles, it was the 416. Mont-Louis, France. Fortifications. way. So all his victories realm of Louis XIV, his Vauban. Air view. were in a sense secondhand. gloire, which was the new France. And at And before we despise victory as a theme, Chantilly, it was surely Victory itself in we should remember that the Periclean the person of Le Grand Conde, especially Acropolis was about exactly that, the vic­ his decisive victory, as the Due d'Enghien, tory of Athens over everything. The Par­ at Rocroi, in 1643. thenon is hubris embodied, and so is Chantilly is the garden everyone Chantilly, but the fierce joy and the gran­ loved. It is trie one even Louis most ad­ deur are no less for that. mired and, indeed, wanted for himself. These concepts may also be associated We know that he hinted to Conde on more with the intention to "forcer la nature"

401. Lucca. Fortifications. Curtain wall from flank of .

215 276 Architecture: The Natural and the M a n m a d e France : Gardens, Fort ifi cations, and Modern Urban ism 211

which surely played a part in the creation bert de l'Orme to Blondel there is some is fascinating to watch the great new forms of the French Classic garden. Yet it was suggestion that the idea of a continuing take shape step by step, logically and with Louis and his advisers who employed the order, embracing the Gothic, may well obsessive passion.* term, never the landscape architects. It is have been present. How did it all come about? Again, we a political phrase. So the English, as they It is, in fact, their mixture of Neopla- can begin at Chantilly (fig. 396). If we developed their Romantic gardens in the tonism with rationalism, even with scien- look at the courtyard in front of the cha­ decades to come, tried to make them look tism, that links the cathedrals and the teau, we see that it looks like a with natural in part for political reasons, as a gardens. They are both very French, and at the four corners, and we can widely recognized criticism of French ab­ it is, therefore, no wonder that their most compare it for a start with a fort at Net- --^j solutism—though the gardens themselves important forms bear family resem­ tuno (fig. 397), built by Giuliano and An­ are no less works of human artifice and blances. Moreover, we must not assume tonio da Sangallo in 1502. This is a citadel the manipulation of growing things than that because the landscape architects did with a bastion at each corner. Each bastion the French gardens are. not write about symbolism they were any has a face (the outward face) and a flank. On the other hand, the French land­ less concerned with it than were the In the flank is at least one gun that was scape architects, though they were serving Gothic architects—who did not write meant to fire across the curtain wall of the the concept of "forcer la nature" to a certain about it either. But they were Cartesians 3%. Chantilly. Chateau and gardens. Air view from west. citadel and the opposite face of the bastion extent, clearly did not think of their work after all; they wanted to show us, make Engraving by Perelle. across the way. That face takes its angle in those overbearing terms. Their view us see, not merely allude. So they threw from the siting of the gun, or rather, the was better stated by Boyceau de la Bar- out almost all the old iconography and not noble enough to enjoy his approval. two are coordinated so that the shot can auderie when he named his treatise La came down to how things look. In a sense, We are told, too, that Vauban and Le rake the bastion's face. Then, in order to Traite du jardinage selon les raisons de la na­ the word pourtraiturc says it all, and in the Notre were collaborators at Chantilly. protect the gun, to shield its flank, the ture et de Vart. Both are reasonable and they hands of Le Notre it becomes one of the Vauban was supposed to have designed bastion is "eared," so becoming a bastion work together. We noted earlier that pour- great vehicles for the expression of human balancing bridges to span the great oreillonne. In this way, all the forms take traiture itself involved a similar conjunc­ meaning. It is, in fact, one of the greatest and connect the island of the chateau with shape according to the intersection of lines tion—in its case, a cooperation between to be created by any age. Through it, and the mainland. We do not know whether of sight and the trajectory of missile weap­ the ideal, in geometry, and the real, in through the program it serves, the Classic or not they were ever built. We do know, ons. The form, therefore, is beginning to scale. We have found a similar union of garden, all Cartesian optics, becomes the however, that Vauban's work was closely open out in a series of intersecting diag­ the Real and the Ideal before, most par­ cathedral of the seventeenth century, cel­ connected with the gardens in contem­ onals, moving out across the countryside ' ticularly in Gothic architecture, and the ebrating the Virgin's garden of France, the porary thought. A letter recently found in as the gardens, too, eventually would do. integral relationship between cathedrals cosmic order, and the rationality of the a Venetian archive by Mirka Benes de­ and gardens has constantly made itself felt. human mind. scribes a certain parterre as laid out "in the These shapes were invented because of . manner of Vauban." the development of cannon during the fif­ Here we encounter one of the many Another thing that the landscape ar­ teenth century, which necessitated a total reasons why art historians have to study chitects and theoreticians did not talk The idea that the arts of reassessment of the way fortifications had works of art directly, and afresh in each about much, but which they knew per­ and of landscape architecture were almost to be made. It is worthwhile to look back generation, and cannot depend upon what fectly well, was the art of fortification. the same was quite a logical one in the at that development for a moment.+ The others, even when they are contempo­ They were contemporaries of the greatest seventeenth century. Together, they beautiful walls of Montagnana (fig. 398), raries of those works, have written about military engineer of all time, and one of shaped a new architecture, an earth-mov­ which is in the Veneto and has a couple of them. The deepest, most persistent visual the most admirable of human beings: Se- ing art in which, at the scale of the land­ villas by Palladio nearby, can show us what images often remain nonverbal, precisely bastien le Prestre de Vauban, who became scape itself, the human will reached out to the walls of medieval Italian cities gener- because they are deep and persistent. They marshal of France. We know that Vauban control the environment farther than deal with experiences that are in part out­ was a special friend of Le Notre. He and human beings had ever been able to reach 'Especially in Blaise Francois de Pagan, Comtc de side verbal discourse. Not one of the land­ Le Notre were almost the only people at before. So the treatises written about for­ McrvcilJcs, Traite des fortifications, Paris. 1645: and scape architects of the seventeenth century tifications are much like those about gar­ L'Abbe de Fay, Veritable manierc de bien fortifier de M. Versailles about whom the poisonous dc Vauban, Paris, 1694. would have said that he was working in Saint-Simon had little but good to say, dens. They begin with geometry and go a Gothic order, even though from Phili- on to scale, because they are expanding fit is briefly traced in Horst de la Croix, Military Con­ despite the fact that their pedigrees were siderations in City Planning: Fortifications, New York, their conceptions to landscape size, and it 1972. 278 Architecture: The Natural and the Man made prance: Gardens, Fort ifi cations, a n d M o d c rn U r b a n i s m 219

398. Montagnana, Italy. Medieval fortifications

ally looked like. The wall had to be high, With the introduction of cannon in the All through the fifteenth century, the because the thing most to be feared was fifteenth century, firing first a stone ball builders of fortifications struggled with assault by scaling ladders. So the high wall and soon one of iron, a breach could be these new problems. At Soncino, of about is supplemented by towers that are even made rapidly. Hence, the wall had to be­ 1473 (fig. 399), every ancient instinct told higher, and there are crenellations at the come thick. Ideally, it should be built up them to the wall high and to retain top that were meant to protect the archers. not of stone but of earth; though generally the crenellations for its defenders. At the The wall can be fairly thin, as those of it consisted of two faces of stone packed same time, they thickened it and slanted Montagnana are, because the heavy stone with earth. Similarly, for one's own can­ it back to encourage the cannon balls to balls that were projected against it from non, low raking fire was infinitely pref­ ricochet off it. They lowered and broad­ various kinds of machines took a long erable to plunging fire. The latter is ened the towers as platforms for the guns, while to break through it. This gave the especially ineffective for a weapon, like the but in so doing, they were clearly fighting defenders time (and Viollet-le-Duc has Renaissance cannon, of comparatively flat their preconceptions every step of the marvelous drawings of this) to build some trajectory. With the arrow, which was a way. By the time of Nettuno, in 1502, of kind of structure behind the wall at that weapon of lower velocity and therefore which we have already mentioned the spot to trap the assault if and when it broke higher trajectory, it did not matter quite plan, they had it all worked out except into the breach. The same principles hold that they refused to come down. They good for mining. The wall does not have so much, but it was essential to bring the wanted the height, and with it they needed to be very thick; it has to be high. batteries of cannon down to sweep the 397. Nettuno, Italy. Fort. 1501-1502. G. & A. da Sangallo. Plan. ground before them. and wanted the masonry . Oth- 280 itecture: The Natural and the Ma tint a d e prance: Gardens, Fort i fi cations, and M o d e r n U r b a n i s m 281

erwise, it is all rationalized. There is the smooth face of the bastion, and its ears. The mouth of the cannon gapes from the flank, protecting the curtain and bastion beyond it. The whole is totally without projections that might shatter under bombardment. It is bound together with one strong stringcourse, of a kind that Vauban and Le Notre were both to em­ ploy later. Finally, by the time of Lucca, toward the middle of the sixteenth century, it was felt possible to lower the wall considerably (fig. 400). It stretches out to enclose the whole of that beautiful Tuscan city. The great curtain walls, and the flanks, ears, 400. Lucca, Italy. Fortifications. 16th century. Curtain wall and bastion. and faces of the enormous bastions, are all there before us. We can stand at the crit­ across the way will keep it off? ical spot, in the flank with the cannon­ eers. At Lucca, there are spaces for two of One thing we do know is that "they" them side by side (fig. 401). Their re­ ("the other") will come in overpowering sponsibility was not to worry about their force, with more men than we have, own flank but to fire across the front of flooding in toward the curtain wall, and the curtain wall and the far face of the we cannot bring them under fire until they I'Svsn-wi are terribly close. What can we do? The bastion on the other side. We begin to feel 402. Diagram of tiemi-hme and other elements, 1st system, after Vauban. that it is a long way across, a long cur­ answer to that always was to push the defenses farther out into space. First came tain to defend. Even worse, what if the covered way. This has a gentle slope so in garden design and used it to leap into a good broad full of water in front attack indeed were to come in on our that the counterattack can erupt all of a space, so, too, did Vauban. He was the of curtain and bastion alike. Then, out in flank, scaling the face of our own bastion? sudden, flooding out upon the attacker in great engineer of the dehors, the outside. front of the curtain, a demi-lune appears How do we know that the cannoneers its turn. He, too, conquered the earth's face. The (fig. 402), a half-moon, though it is bas­ Having reached out so far, we then great etoile of the citadel of is an out­ ically triangular, whose own slanting faces look back and note a disquieting gap be­ standing example (fig. 403): It is still the can be covered by fire from the bastions hind us between the curtain and the demi­ headquarters of an infantry regiment and whose own lines of fire will intersect lune. We must fill it in, and so create the today. We can see them all there: cur­ theirs. But that is not enough; the instinct -*• #H-r**$&***5 -VIMfi* tenaille, stretched taut between the bas­ tain, bastions, tenailles, and demi-lunes. is to get more defenses farther out yet and (How beautiful the words are, more like to fill them with troops to take the first tions in front of the curtain wall. But the drums than bugles, embodying in them­ brunt of the assault. This creates the cov­ major thrust is outward, and once that is selves the stately ritual of the .) Be­ ered way, the most forward position of started, there is theoretically no end to it, yond the demi-lunes, all is doubled. The all. There are traverses in it (like those in because there will always be anxiety about covered way is repeated, then repeated the trenches during World War I) so that the massive force that might be coming. again. It could go on forever; indeed, it if the enemy breaks in at one point, he "The other" always threatens to over­ cannot roll up the whole line too easily. whelm us. goes beyond practicality into art, to be­ For counterattacks, there are places d'armes Just as the gardens created their great come the ultimate expression of our com­ from which we, ourselves, can attack stars, the etoiles, so too, by the seventeenth mon anxieties. 399. Soncino, Italy. Fortifications of r.istello, 1473. suddenly across the beyond the century, did the military art. As Le Notre It is an obsession, an image of the self assimilated everything that had occurred and the adversary, as the lovely book 282 Architecture: The Natural and the M a n m a d e about Vauban by Parent and Verroust plete. It has changed the human view of makes abundantly clear.* The authors the city, and of the landscape, too. We publish a beautiful drawing that shows have brought our batteries down; we are what the new construction means (fig. defending in echelon, in depth rather than 404). It means moving the earth; it is like in height. The high wall has disappeared: making a garden. Everything is slanting How terrifying that the age-old image of out on a continuous line of sight so that, security, as old as Sumer, no longer ap­ from the bastions and the curtain, the view plies. The wall of Gilgamesh is nothing; is never impeded, and it goes out along security involves interdependence. There­ the gentle slope of the glacis into space. fore, no individual ever feels wholly safe The revolution the cannon began is com- again. Ideally, even the stone would go; now we have trenches, deep earthworks,

*A luminous work: Michel Parent and Jacques Ver- and we defend in depth, extending hori­ rousc. Vauban, Paris, 1971. zontally across the landscape. Our entire

41)3. Lille. France. Fortifications of citadel. Plan. 404. Construction of fortifications from a treatise by a collaborator of Vauban.

W 284 Architecture: The Natural and the M a n m a d e prance Gardens, Fortifications, and Modern U r b a n i s m 285

frontier becomes a garden, traversed by Michelangelo was clearly moved bv Vauban developed, and there are gigantic cannonballs of iron. this trust and instantly went to work on homworks that reach out to deny a land­ There is one touching footnote to this. a series of studies for the fortification of scape feature to the enemy. On another In 1527, the thin walls of an ancient town the gates. There was no time to rebuild side, the horns are doubled by further were threatened by the invincible army of the curtains, but there was a chance that outer works, so that a great crown bur­ the world's most powerful empire. It was if the gates could be rebuilt, Francesco Fer- geons in the landscape. Michelangelo al­ Florence. In 1527, when the troops of rucci (the only partisan leader Florence ready had sensed that necessity for Charles V sacked Rome, the Florentines was to produce between 1529 and World considerable extension in front of some of took the opportunity to revolt against the War II) might be able to harass the Im­ the gates, and for that he imagined a figure Medici Pope and proclaim the republic. perial troops seriously enough to cause that already resembles Vauban's horn and Vaingloriously, they inscribed the Palazzo them to break off the siege. In order to do crown types (fig. 407). Vecchio with a new motto: Jesus Christus so, he needed to be able to sally forth and Rex Florentini Populi. They had, however, to retire under the protection of covering to prepare themselves for a siege. They fire from the gates. To achieve that result, knew that it would come, as indeed it did Michelangelo devised, indeed invented, 407. Michelangelo. Fortification drawing #2S. before the end of the decade. But they had methods of fortification a hundred years only their old, thin medieval walls with before their time. their high, proud, fragile gates to protect The state of the art in 1529 was much them (fig. 280). So they put Michelangelo as we saw it at Nettuno. Michelangelo, in charge of remodeling the fortifications. though, made use of the demi-lune, with lunettes, and he studied the relationship of the glacis to the ditch. His drawings are passionately felt; some of them overlie 406 Vauban Model of fortified town. studies of the human figure, an older pas­ sion superseded by this new need (fig. 405).* It is remarkable to watch his mind Most moving of all are Michelan­ working. He clearly was trying to lower gelo's drawings of the angle where the the walls and to tear them apart into their thin walls of Florence came down to the essential components, each element taking Arno at the point where the Mugnone its place in relation to intersecting lines of Creek flowed into it (fig. 408). To Mi­ fire, so that the old solid forms are already chelangelo, it seemed to be the critical becoming etoiles. angle; he did his most passionate drawings A model owned by Vauban (fig. 406) for it. Some, as de Tolnay once wrote, sets out to show all the variations in for­ reach out like the claws of crustaceans to tifications that had developed by the late crush the foe.* But it is the diagonals of seventeenth century. There are the big the integrated fire plan that govern the The other thing about the drawings is bastions, the demi-hmes, with the outer shapes. One of them is, in fact, like a that they are dealing with fortifications as works deploying beyond them. There are bursting grenade as it literally articulates a whole landscape art, and Michelangelo also bastions with , of a kind itself out into space along its intersecting developed long spatial diagonals in them, lines of fire. We can almost hear the rattle diagonals that he would exploit later in his of its musketry as it bursts itself apart at plan for the Capitoline (fig. 303) and in 'They arc exhibited in the Casa Buonarotti in Florence, the angle. his Pauline Chapel frescoes, precursors of where they first opened my eyes to the splendor of the Baroque and, in that sense, of Le Notre Renaissance fortifications and the genius of Michel­ angelo, as 1 tried to describe them in "Michelangelo's and Vauban. They were already at the 'Charles de Tolnay, Mickdanoelo: Sculptor, Painter, Ar­ 4(6. Michelangelo. Fortification Drawing #27. Casa Fortification Drawings: A Study in the Reflex Diag­ new, vast landscape scale that the gardens Buonarotti. Florence. onal." Perspeaa I. 1952. 38-45. chitect, Princeton, 1975, p. 136. france: Gardens, Fort ifi cations, and Modern U rb a n i s m

410. Rocroi. Town as rebuilt and refortified by Vauban

eventually were to attain. Michelangelo's walls in cities, and we cannot help but metrically embodied, is still optically, the compound pier. In fortification, it was drawings for the Mugnone angle can be recognize the grandeur of the new con­ even scientifically, directed. This is their the tower that had been discarded. Vauban compared with the general plan of Chan- ception. As we swing around farther, we own "scale" and "powrtrairwre." They are took it up again and redesigned it as the tilly and with aerial photographs of it show­ see Vauban's church, a kind of simplified Cartesian, too; they owe their confirma­ tour bastiomie, lowered and compacted like ing the abstract, earth-sculpture shape of engineer's architecture. Although built of tion to the way the human eye works...... a bastion but also covered, and as such the the parterre and, indeed, of the whole is­ stone, which only a minority of American We remember that Vauban colJabo-| land on which the chateau sits (fig. 396). Colonial buildings were, it can still re­ rated with Le N6tre_aL-Ch.antilly and ap-/ Gardens and fortifications now do seem mind Americans very much of their own parenltly designed ponts a bascuier, which: like one art, and the climax of their rela­ seventeenth- and eighteenth-century archi­ have since disappeared. Yet the monuf tionship comes with the gardens of Le tecture, which was also a kind of sim­ mental half-round stringcourse with Notre and the fortifications of Vauban. plified and regularized variant of the which Le Notre bound his island citadel We should go, for example, to Rocroi. European type. But as we swing the cam­ is the twin of the stringcourse that Vauban \ Long after Conde's victory—and Conde era even farther to get the full arc of invariably used, running like a cannon ,.....was one of Vauban's first commanders— the horizon, we more fully grasp how shot along his walls. It is there in the beau­ 'y \ it was refortified by Vauban. A beautiful the small scale of the old world has been tiful work at (fig. 411), in the I drawing, which may be by the master transformed into the enormous scale of magnificent, swelling block of a building •y\ himself, shows us the fortifications as he the new. that can remind Americans once again of developed them (fig. 409). The town has Then, if we can imagine the ditch full their own architecture, here especially that a radial plan, but that is not Vauban's, who of water, we see that Vauban's Rocroi and of Henry Hobson Richardson. It is there preferred, as we shall see, the static dis­ Le Notre's Chantilly are products of a sin­ in Vauban's unique Tour Doree at Ca- cipline of the rectangular grid. Our pho­ gle art, one that seems to owe nothing to maret (fig. 412), where a specialized func­ tograph was taken from the that the past or to tradition. Far more even than tion was fulfilled in a form that recalls that Vauban built on top of the southern bas­ ,_the shapes of the modern architecture of of the medieval keep. tion (fig. 410). It looks out across the I the twentieth century, these shapes are In his use of towers, Vauban comes to demi-lune that guards the main gate to 1 profoundly themselves, having little to do remind us a bit of the architect of Chartres, the bastion on the other side. If we swing I with memory or association. We are who had been strong-minded enough to the camera around, we see how this art of i-tempted to call them "abstract," as we call reject the slender columns, which all the 409. Rocroi. France. Plan. the whole landscape is totally different in those of modern architecture, but they are up-to-date architects of his generation had kind and scale from that of the old archi­ not really that, because they grow out of come to regard as essential, in order to tecture of houses gathered together behind an inner dynamic which, while geo­ return to an outmoded Romanesque type, 288 Architecture: The Natural and the M a n in a d e France: Gardens, Fort i fi cations, and Modern Urbanism 289

direct ancestor of the casemates of modern tions, like its humiliations, were swept times. Vauban used such tower-bastions away by Joan at Reims. Yet the northern along the extensive walls of Besanqon, frontier still lay only just beyond Amiens, which, since they border the river, could hardly outside Reims. Paris always lay not properly be" enfiladed through the nor­ open, almost on the edge. The Imperial mal bastion system. Vauban's new case­ enemy, still the more puissant heir of mates, part tower, part bastion, not only Charlemagne, perennially threatened deal with the problem but are also beau­ from the near banks of the Rhine. Louis tiful, and are as beautifully reflected in the XIV changed all that. France pushed her water as any chateau (fig. 413 and p. IV). boundaries out to the river and the moun­ Behind and above them at Besanqon, one tains, seizing and, finally, holding of Vauban's greatest guards the Franche-Comte, Lorraine, Alsace: Nancy, heights of this first and most durable of Metz, Strasbourg. Louis' territorial gains, the Franche- Now, at last, the shape that France as­ Comte, that marvelous piedmont behind sumed was at once full and geometric and the mountain frontier. of an appropriately modern scale. That I have alluded to Louis' grand design terminology is intended to recall the art for the shape of continental France and the of the garden, the art of pourtraiture. In­ criticism that colonial-minded historians deed, Louis drew his portrait of France in of the last century leveled against it. Now, so authoritative a style that it continues to however, when colonies everywhere have convince us of the correctness of its like­ been irretrievably lost, we are confronted ness. It is a shape that in every way holds with the image of a France which seems together functionally no less than visually, all the better and stronger for that fact, since the frontier provinces that Louis in­ precisely because of the European shape corporated into the state were also to be­ 411 Gravelmes, Frjnce Fortifications. Vauban Detail. Louis gave it. We remember, too, that the come the great industrial districts, rich in question of France's shape also played a coal and other sources of power. They differences in Louis' time as in our own. tains' pressures. Beyond, on the borders central part in the creation and spread of made France workable as a self-sufficient The maintenance of that shape was of Andorra, the broad, eared bastions of Gothic architecture in the twelfth century. nation, as in fact the first modern nation- Vauban's responsibility; he was the gar­ Mont-Louis grip the high slopes above an The Ile-de-France, the king's own state at fully continental scale. Other states dener of the frontiers, and he defended alpine meadow full of flowers (fig. 416). country, lay under the shadow of Nor­ had surely preceded France in their mod­ them in depth. The splendid map pub­ Its barrack square still gleams white in the mandy, and the northern and eastern fron­ ernity, England and Holland among lished by Parent and Verroust shows the mountain sun, clear, clean, cool, disci­ tiers were only a few miles outside Paris them. But England was hardly continen­ conformation of completed France and plined. It is the very image of the new (fig. 210). Suger built in response to these tal, and Holland, which was Louis' con­ stresses Vauban's essential contribution to army Vauban did so much to retrain, re- conditions and in defiance of them. In so stant annoyance and, in a sense, his it (fig. 414). His forts, his fortified cities, equip, and re-form, and which in the new doing, he shaped the essential symbol of nemesis, was simply not as large as France ring its borders like the bastions, the demi­ century was to be uniformed in white, its a new nation, which then grew as Gothic and, in the course of the centuries, espe­ lunes, and the tenailles of a single citadel. white columns maneuvering in the white architecture itself grew. Each brought the cially after the common loss of empire, Each relates to all the others and to the parade. other along with it, two new shining ideas was surely fated to become the lesser of topography like the of one great Finally, we should turn to Neuf-Bri- full of light, until everything was held the two. Again, we are caught up in the ctoile, the nation as a whole. They push sach, lying in wait behind the Rhine (fig. firm by them from to the Pyre­ big, single shape, like one of Le Notre's out as bridgeheads across the Rhine, like 417). Brisach beyond the Rhine having nees, from the coast of the Channel and parterres: The ponrtrait of France, impress­ Huninque's bursting bomb (fig. 415). been lost, Neuf-Brisach was designed by the Bay of Biscay to the Rhone. All of this ing the nation itself with a common char­ Others, like Ville Franche-en-Conflent, Vauban all complete and in his most de­ survived the Hundred Years War, at the acter that sometimes countered, most push down through the boulder-strewn veloped manner. The bastions are pulled end of which most of its interior parti­ often overrode, its many serious regional torrents of the Pyrenees, stretching out in and become very small, while the cur­ and deforming in response to the moun­ tain wall between them takes on the set- Gardens, Fort ifi c atio n s , and M o d e r ti U r h a n 291 290 Architecture The Natural and the M an m a d e

ban also avoided the radial plan when he could do so, even though it, too, had be come a major canonical element in all ideal schemes for fortified cities. With the radial plan, reserves of men and guns could be most rapidly and directly dispatched to threatened bastions from the central square—but at the expense of stability and calm, since the square so pierced by radial avenues became the hub of whirling, cen­ trifugal forces. Whatever the reason, Vau­ ban wanted none of it. He preferred the rectangular grid. This might delay rein­ forcement from the center by a matter of a few minutes, but it provides in return a sheltered, well-defined central square, the image of discipline and confidence I re­ ferred to earlier. It is servitude et grandeur ntilitaire made visible, made into a city, and it preserves

413. Bensnncpn. Tour Bnstiomicc. Vauban. 414. France Towns fortified by Vauban under Louis XIV. Map. backs of the old tenaille itself. But then, beyond the ditch, everything is repeated at larger scale, with what amounts to sec­ ond bastions connected by another tenaille, before which a demi-lune is thrown out into space. Each unit of two bastions and tenaille, with its expanded outer works, takes on a winged shape, as if, in fact, it were lifting to the horizon. The dehors thus seem to reach their definitive expansion, but behind them everything is pulled in, retracted, calmed down. The combination of small bastion with indented wall enor­ 412. Camaret. France. Fortifications. Vauban. La Tour Doree. mously reduces the final perimeter of de­ fense, so that the tendency toward centrifugal dispersion, which had been building itself into the sytem since the fif­ teenth century, is drastically reduced. A more stable order is gained. It is probably for this reason that Vau­ 292 Architecture : The Natural and the M a n m a d e prance: Gardens, Fort i fi cations, and M o d e r ti U t b a n i s m 293

ancient traditions, recalls ancient virtues, But Washington, D.C., follows the model Most of all, it brought about the Park in ways that the forms of the new forti­ even more closely (fig. 419). L'Enfant's Commission Plan for Washington, of 1901 Z'sL fications themselves do not normally do. plan sends out radiating avenues from the fng. 419). Now, at last, Washington sur­ It does not explqde into the centrifugal Capitol and the White House. They cross passed the scale of Versailles. The Grand •^ hysteria that most treatises of fortification the grid of streets upon which Jefferson Bassin became the reflecting pool beyond had prescribed and which Palmanova, for insisted. By the time of the Civil War, the which the Lincoln Memorial was to rise. example, exemplifies—although there dome of the Capitol found its own ap­ It is Versailles developed iconographically every other radial avenue is forced to de­ propriate scale, high enough to control the according to memories lying far deeper than tour to the central square in order to pre­ wide spaces below it. By the 1880s, Wash­ those embodied in seventeenth-century serve the stability of that space to some ington's obelisk stood on the bank of the absolutism alone. Its conceptual structure extent. But Vauban's unhurried, orthog­ Potomac. It is miraculous that so spare a supports a profoundly Classical imagery Sy i onal grid has its own special Roman mea­ design could have been chosen at that pe­ in which Lincoln broods in his temple like u sure and dignity. An unshakable calm lies riod to balance the Capitol's dome. It may Zeus and Washington points with his obe­ at the heart of his etoiles. well be that the final decision to build it lisk to the sun, calling up kings far more But, if Vauban avoids radiating ave­ in that form was affected by the visual ancient than those of France. In that set­ nues, the gardens embrace them, espe­ relationship between the obelisk in the ting, all political acts take on the trappings cially those gardens that most try to reach Place de la Concorde and the dome of the of Classical literature and so attain their out across the countryside, through parks Invalides, as it seems at that angle to be most universal dimension. The Kennedy and over meadows, to seize terrain and to rising above the pedimented portico of the control expansive topographical space. Chambre des Deputes. 415 Humnqne. Fr3iice Fortifications Vauban Plan. Versailles is the major example (fig. 418). There, until the early twentieth cen­ 417 Neuf-Brisach, France Air view of town showing Here, again, as we have seen, there was tury, the matter rested, until the World's fortifications Italian precedent, especially in the radiat­ Columbian Exposition in Chicago, of ing avenues of Baroque Rome, deriving 1893, brought Versailles forward once from the urbanistic schemes of Sixtus V again, adapting the forms of the Grand (fig. 305). Once again, however, the Ital­ Bassin to shape a new Court of Honor. It ian form is sculptural, the French envi­ is the Classic garden literally translated ronmental. The Roman avenues are into a city center. That is one reason why comparatively narrow and are cut through the forms of the buildings around the great the solids of the old city. The French reach basin in Chicago seem so ghostly. It is as out toward continental scale, laying out if the woods of Versailles had taken one the idea oi a new kind of city, region, or giant step toward the water and turned nation. It is an affair of space, rapid move­ into white columns, porticoes, and ment, and expanding powers rushing un­ domes. The instinct was correct, because impeded across a void. the Classic garden "wanted" to be a city As such, Versailles becomes the model and was, indeed, already the skeleton of not only for all of absolutism's kingly pal­ the city to come. The City Beautiful aces in the last years of the ancien regime movement took shape out of that instinct. everywhere but also, and more cogently, It produced Daniel Burnham's plans for for the capitals of the two emerging na­ Chicago and San Francisco, where the tions of wholly continental scope. Russian Acropolis of Athens was welded to San St. Petersburg is more French than Italian, Francisco's Twin Peaks and to the major with its endless open spaces and imperial axis of Versailles.* skies, white all night on a midsummer's eve and frosty with stars in December. "Described at greater length in my American Architec­ ture and Urbanism. New York: 1969; rev. ed., 1988.

T Gardens, Fort ifi cations, and Modern U rb a n i 295 294 Architecture: The Natural and the M a n m a d c [- r a n c e

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funerals become those of the Gracchi; Classicism is Memory and Sorrow, all carried on a cosmic axis from dome to obelisk to temple, and to the burial ground across the water. It is all a garden. But the ultimate garden is modern Paris; Haussmann's holies, as finally built, are even more direct descendants of those of Versailles than the avenues of "Wash­ ington are. Around the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile they incorporate Le Notre's grand axis from the Tuileries, now be­ come the Champs-Ely sees (fig. 420). They are related to the solid blocks of buildings that define them, as the allies of Versailles are to the woods through which they are cut. We remember that the trees at Versailles were originally en charmille, so that they resembled Italian palazzo blocks, flat-topped masses defining the streetlike allces. Then the trees grew7; the crowns filled out. The effects became those of Romantic-Naturalism and most specifically recalled the character of Gothic architectural forms. The buildings ot Haussmann's Paris bring the opposites to­ gether, the Classical and the Medieval, the Mediterranean and the North. The shop windows twinkle with light; above them, a Classical order controls the flat facades, while the high roofs of medieval Paris are adapted to cap the whole with a rounded shape as bursting with organic life as the forms of nature herself. So the mansarded buildings along the streets of nineteenth-century Paris came to create their incomparable building clumps, like clumps of trees (fig. 421). They are not stiff blocks but burgeoning masses, fully crowned. Through them, and defined by them, the avenues run, teeming with life, diverted by every storefront but always reaching on toward some new epiphany on the urban horizon. So Paris becomes the modern garden, the con- 418. Versailles. Air vie 298 Architecture: The Natural and the Manmade F r an c e : Gardens, Fort i fi cations, and Modern U r b a ti i s m 299

summate work of modern art. like Washington. Le Corbusier brings his Like all living things, the garden car­ jardin anglais in at one side, like Washing­ ries the seeds of its own destruction within ton's Mall, and he has two sets of radiating it. In Haussmann's Paris, despite the crit­ avenues running from the two etoiles in icism, surely justified, that may be di­ the middle of the city, again very much rected against Haussmann's social aims as in Washington. But then, from the and effects, mass and void were still in outer perimeter inward, he progressively balance. Buildings still, and preeminently, destroys the definition of the grid and its defined and shaped the street. The dy­ blocks of buildings. He obliterates the tra­ namic principle of open space that we ditional relationship of building to street, traced from the Tuileries was still in ten­ of the avenues as allies penetrating solids sion with the sense of variety and place, and firmly defined by them. Therefore, and was in the end controlled by such con­ while in the outer ring he uses more or siderations. In 1922, however, the Classic less traditional buildings with courtyards, garden became the model for Le Corbu- like those of contemporary Amsterdam or sier's Ideal City for Three Million Inhab­ Vienna, he moves inward to a building itants (fig. 422). It all looks a good deal type that is a bit like Versailles itself. It is

419 Washington. D C Mall and centra) area Circa 1938 Air view 420 Paris, France Arc de Tnomphe and Place de I'Etoile. Air vicv F r a it c c : G a r d e n s , F o r t if i c a t i o n $ , a n d M o d e r n U r b a n i s in 301

very Cartesian) stand out with shapeless, empty spaces between them. At La De­ fense, of course, the cars are directed around at a lower level, but the principle is otherwise the same, and it is out of that principle—that puristic, cataclysmic Neo- platonic principle—that everything that had made the city a garden, and worth living in, came to be destroyed. The French resisted it on the whole, and for a long time, though not long enough. It awaited a very naive culture to put it first 422. Ideal City for Three Million. Plan. 1922. into practice. Le Corbusier. Such was eventually found in Amer­ ica, North and South alike. In Brazil, it velopment. Bossuet, the greatest of the produced the desert of Brasilia, but that chaplains at Versailles, once attacked its 421 Paris Rue Turbigo was a brand-new town. In the United reason for being by thundering in the pres­ a long slab like a fence, stepping in and already contracted and was to become the States, it was embraced in the Redevel­ ence of the king, "The city of the rich out, a redents, running through a long jar- major carrier of a peculiarly modern sick­ din anglais that obliterates the grid of ness, wherein the automobile is seen as a streets. Finally, in the center, there are mythic vehicle, directed by pseudoheroes enormous superblocks with cross-axial through the center of the town and de­ skyscrapers set in vast open spaces; here stroying civilization along the way (fig. the old definition of the city is utterly 423). Le Corbusier says, though, that he, destroyed. too, is Cartesian. He calls his skyscrapers In 1925, when he presents his "Voisin" Gratte-Ciels Cartesiens, claiming that they plan for the center of Paris, Le Corbusier are supremely rational because they are all violently condemns the traditional street, cut off at the top and of the same size, and the rue corridor. He says that it forces us to are therefore not romantic, aspiring, and look into the faces of other human beings, competitive like the skyscrapers of New which is very unpleasant; it cuts off the York (figs. 1, 2). Most of all, his is an sky, denying us air, space, and light. And urbanism of open space, and of an espe­

he specifically calls for a green garden in cially wide space through the center. 4Z3. Ideal City for Three Million. 1922. Le Corbusier. Perspective along main boulevard. which the buildings of the city can stand As we have seen, Le Notre had imaged well apart from one another. He shows us that, too, but at a different scale. Still, if opment of the 1950s and 1960s and so de­ cannot long endure!"* Le Corbusier, en what that would look like, with each sky­ we approach one of the great bassins of the stroyed cities that existed already. The revanche, tells us that his Ideal City will be scraper alone in its superblock of jardin Tuileries, we feel a vastness of space which Oak Street connector in New Haven, for a city of managers, a Cite d'Affaires, and anglais (fig. 485). is prototypical of that of Le Corbusier example (fig. 424), with its eight lanes of that only those who can speak the lan­ He invokes the garden but has, in fact, (figs. 361, 362). If we look up from it traffic and corporate skyscraper towers, guage of the city will be allowed to live destroyed it by eliminating its definition toward the Etoile, we are looking along might well have been modeled upon Le in it. All others will be banished to the and its scale, so creating a pourtrait thor­ Le Notre's axis, and it we continue out on Corbusier's drawing of 1922. In the larger farms or the industrial linear cities of the oughly blank. He does so most of all the Avenue de la Grande Armee to La De­ sense, it was, indeed, so modeled. "Four Routes." American Redevelop- through his obsession with the introduc­ fense, we find ourselves in Le Corbusier's Sociologically, too, there is a broad tion of the motorcar into the city. He had world, where the skyscrapers (here not avenue that runs from Versailles to Le *In general, see Nancy Mitford, The Sun King, New Corbusier and on to American Rede- York. 1966. 302 Architecture: The Natural and the Manm ade France: Gardens, Fort ifi cations, and Modern Urban ism

424. New Haven, Connecticut. Oak Screct connector 1960s. Air view.

ment worked out in much the same way. In its attempt to build up the city's tax base and to induce suburbanites to shop in it, it gave everything over to super­ highways and luxury housing, while low- income neighborhoods were destroyed. Their inhabitants were pushed out of the center of the city, usually with nowhere to go, and empty space, punctuated by skyscraper images of corporate order, of business at large scale, came to dominate the whole. It may therefore be said, I think, that Louis XIV also presides over American Redevelopment no less than over Washington and Paris. On the other hand, by the 1970s, the Classic garden was being taken as a model with which to heal the wounds that Re­ development and the urbanism of the modern movement as a whole had in­ flicted upon the city. The best image of i that was intended for Paris itself, in a pro­ ject—unfortunately never built—by Leon 425. Pans, France. La Villette Competition. 1976. Leon Kricr. Air vie Krier (tig. 425). It was a competition scheme for a quarter called La Villette, the middle, and the fundamental structure them. In that sense, Krier's scheme re­ are much the same: clear, abstract, una­ which is bisected by an existing canal run­ of the Classic garden begins to be restored. claims the structure of Paris and of the shamedly symmetrical. It is thepourtraiture ning down toward one of the few surviv­ Krier's perspective drawing should be of Boyceau once again, while the patterns ing customs houses by Ledoux. Krier uses traditional European city as a whole. It looked at in that connection. It seems al­ themselves remind us of many of those it, not a superhighway, as his central axis; reestablishes the Classic garden, and its most directly inspired by an aerial view of published by Dezallier d'Argenville. he also makes it fairly difficult for auto­ debt to Le Notre is massive and funda­ Versailles. The buildings are drawn in It is equally instructive, even touching, mobiles to get into his streets. So once mental. An aerial view of Vaux coupled clumps, like the trees in such photographs, to compare the park at La Villette, which more, as at Versailles, water runs down with Krier's plan for the government with the allies of streets running through center at La Villette shows us forms that was intended to be surrounded by artists' 304 France: Gardens, Fort i fi cations, an d M o d e rn Urbanism 3 05

a fine balletic pose, perhaps like Balan- gle tower of St. Stephen's, the great chine in old age. He is there in his red Gothic cathedral, served as shoes in Rigaud's portrait as a figure both and command post during it. The con­ female and male: the paternal ruler calling temporary view shows that the Turks had up, as he invariably does, the comple­ neutralized two bastions, flooding right mentary goddess image to aid him in time over the demi-httie, and were about to take of need. up the assault of the curtain wall when He surely compares more than well an army of cavalry, some of it Polish, with the portrait of Louis XV that Rigaud drove them off. Prince Eugene's Belve­ painted in 1730, a generation later. We see, dere (fig. 429) was so sited as to com­

426. Meaux, France. Bossuct's Garden. Andre Le Notre. for example, that Louis XV had terrible memorate that victory. It is fundamentally legs, all knobbly and knock-kneed; ap­ Vaux. One enters on the side away from parently he doesn't want to show them the city and comes through the building, studios, with the garden that Le Notre and droops the kingly robe of France over built for Bossuet himself at Meaux (fig. them like a dressing gown. All the glory 426), for Bossuet was the critic of Ver­ of the grand monarch is gone—of that sailles as Krier is of Le Corbusier, and obsessed, anointed being, that were-king, Krier's garden is clearly based on Le who defies the enemies of France with the Notre's. Bossuet became the bishop of sword of his fathers at his side. Despite Meaux; his Episcopal Palace was situated everything, the splendor of his gardens close to the city -walls, so that there was 427. Paris. La Villette Competition. 1976. Leon Krier. and his citadels is in him, a figure both room for only a small garden of rather Plan of park area. obdurate and very brave. But brave or irregular shape between the two. Le Notre not, he suffered monumental defeats dur­ designed one in the shape of a bishop's happened toward the end of his reign. It ing the early eighteenth century. miter and, as in his Jardin de Sylvie at is best symbolized, I think, in the portrait One of Louis' worst adversaries was Chantilly, succeeds in creating impressive of Louis that Rigaud painted in 1701 (fig. Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had been an scale through the use of one big shape in 428), during the darkest days of a war, officer in his army and, despairing of rapid a confined space. Krier closely adapts even highly avoidable, in which the very ex­ promotion, had taken service with the the little rondpont at Meaux, as well as istence of France was threatened. Louis is Holy Roman Emperor and beaten Louis much of the detailing around the edges of toothless and old; his cheeks have fallen in a couple of bloody campaigns. He the garden (fig. 427). It is therefore ob­ in, but, like a Roman emperor, he is pre­ might well have taken Paris except that a vious that Krier's critically important and sented as an icon of the state. He stands last army of French peasants, hardly influential "Post-Modern" work owes an trained, stood up and fought him to a enormous debt to the French Classic gar­ with the heavy sword of France at his side, standstill at the battle of Malplaquet. At den, as does that of architects like Ricardo the hilt swung well forward. His robe the conclusion of peace, Prince Eugene's Bofill, whose grand housing groups with the fleurs-de-lis, like those worn by grateful sovereign gave him a fine new around Paris have now, like Krier's work Suger's king and Joan's dauphin at Reims, palace, the Belvedere, looking out across 428. Hyacinthe Rigaud. Louis XIV. 1701. also, revived the whole Classical language is pushed back to show his marvelous legs the city of Vienna. There is a seventeenth- of building as well. in the first ballet position. We remember that Louis had danced the sun-king in the century painting of Vienna as it looked which, like Vaux, bulges out and releases Earlier, we left the young king looking Ballets de Cour when he was a boy. His­ during the Turkish siege of 1683, at which the viewer to the garden view, here of out over the main axis at Versailles, the torians of ballet are fond of saying that time, it must be said, Louis XIV did not the city that Prince Eugene, like another Sun King carried on his globe toward his modem ballet began when Louis XIV fi­ behave very well. He could not resist the Hercules, had done so much to save. destiny, which for good or ill was to be nally was induced to give up dancing. This opportunity to embarrass his Christian Only French garden architecture could that of France. We know all too well what is clearly a slander. He could at least strike colleague by encouraging the Turks just a have so honored one of France's deadliest little. The siege almost succeeded; the sin- foes. 306 Architecture Natural and a n d M o d e r n U r b a n i s m

In France itself, the plan of Versailles became the plan of France. When the administrative center was moved to Paris and, in the 1840s, the railroads were pushed to the frontiers in one great cam­ paign of building, all of France achieved a centralized, radial plan (fig. 430). It be­ came an "eroile," in fact, and, perhaps more than that, one city, a polis like Ath­ ens and a nation as well. Garden and fort, its interior articulation is that of the Clas­ sic garden, while Vauban guards its fron­ tiers in depth. Along those frontiers, the fighting hardly ceased for more than two hundred years. The northern border, for example, the old frontier with the em­ pire, was violated at least six times be­ tween the death of Louis XIV and World War II. Each time, there was only that little cushion of landscape space that pushes up from Paris toward Rocroi to absorb the shock. Sometimes the assault was turned back, sometimes not. There is a monu­ ment at , where the church bells play the "Sambre et Meuse" at noon, that commemorates the victory of a ragtag revolutionary army that Louis and Vau­ ban might not have recognized as repre­ senting France (fig. 431). It was able to regroup after a defeat behind Vauban's fortifications at Maubeuge and to win a spectacular victory shortly thereafter. In 1914, the attack on France failed in large part because Vauban had laid out a net­ work of canals running northeast of to the frontier, and had designed them to flood the countryside in time of crisis. In fact, they were flooded in 1914, so that the German flank was never able to ad­ vance along the Channel, thereby in large measure saving England but also saving Paris, because with that flank hung up, the German commander was forced to edge to the east. In so doing, he eventually ex- 429. Vieniu, Austria. Belvedere Palace. J. L. von H Garden, view from palace. 308 Architecture: The Natural and the M a n m a d e

posed his right flank to the taxicabs of Paris and invited the. counterattack that became the victory of the Marne. In 1940, however, the ancient enemy did break through. One of the places that held him up a little was , a bit to the northwest of Charlesville-Mezieres, and fortified by Vauban. Le Quesnoy was taken by the Germans in World War I and liberated by the Australians in 1918. In 1940, a breakthrough occurred right near it, but not easily. If we look in the lower right of the plan of Le Quesnoy, we see a large that crosses the wide moat 430. France. Main railroads of 1840s. flan. and culminates in an important gate, near which there are two slabs of white stone fixed to the wall. One celebrates the ar­ mored combats that took place there in May 1940. The other honors the colonial regiment that held Vauban's fortifications for four days and was finally allowed to march out with the honors of war. So the Wehrmacht lost four days there. When it fianlly broke through, it avoided the mis­ take of 1914 and circled back toward Ca­ lais, trying to cut off the English and French armies that had advanced into Bel­ gium. As it broke through to the coast north of Calais, it hit another city fortified by Vauban, a place called Gravelines. It was and is still an impressive fortification. We see it in a seventeenth-century view right on the edge of broad tidal sands stretching far out into the sea (fig. 432). Here the Wehrmacht was held up for four days more. 432. The capture of Gravelines, France, by Archduke It was then that Goering asked Hitler Leopold as depicted by Snayers. to allow him to use the Luftwaffe to re­ duce the bridgehead. The way the story it was seen that this was one more promise is sometimes written, Hitler did allow Goering could not make good on, Hitler Goering to try to do so, and it was because resumed the ground attack; but he held the Luftwaffe failed that the British army- back his tanks. It sometimes has been said was able to get away. But it was not all that this assault, too, failed only for that quite like that. It turns out that Hitler gave reason, but that again is not the whole Goering only a day and a half, and when story. Mi &

serves nous, Seigneur." Bergues is, indeed, far away and very wet; it also has some of Vauban's greatest fortifications, with big dani-lunes and broad ditches connected with the general system of canals (fig. 435). It is the key point, and it was here that the Germans had to attack—without tanks, but with their very best divisions: the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, their best Waffen SS assault divison, for one. And they could not take it for a week. French infantry, dug in around the forts and be­ 433. . Fortifications and sea defenses. Vauban. hind the ditches, held them long enough Bombardment in 1695. for most of the British army and some of the rest of the French army to get away, It is true that Hitler wanted to save his tanks for a massive attack on the French army to the south, but he could not have used them anyway, because the whole area was one great canal-ditch-tank trap around the port of Dunkirk. That fated city had been the base of the revived French navy under Louis XIV, the home of the great corsair jean Bart. Vauban had fortified it, employing some of his most spectacular innovations. Because of the sands and the tide, he had to design several 435. Berimes, France. Ditch ind ilani-lmic by Vaub.m. kinds of experimental fortresses extending so that, in fact, the Wehrmacht stumbled out into the water (fig. 433), as well as a over Vauban's forts and lost the war. Not wonderfully bursting etoile around the bad for a marshal of France dead two town itself. It is ironic that the English hundred years. forced the French to dismantle some of It is clear that the gardens and the forts those fortifications early in the eighteenth are linked. The garden symbolizes and, century. It was, in any case, toward ­ indeed, creates the image of the new, cen­ kirk that the bulk of the British army was tralized modern France. The fortifica­ withdrawing. tions, employing many of the same forms, Just seven kilometers inland from especially those deriving from projected Dunkirk, about at the first contour line, lines of sight, defend that France in ech­ and where all the canals were brought to­ elon behind the frontiers. In those forti­ gether by Vauban, lies the town of fications, we can read the hard, intelligent, Bergues (fig. 434). It is linked with Grave- devoted service of the men who created lines in French army tradition; there is a the nation—of whom the gardens drew dour army song of the seventeenth cen­ the portraits and embodied the characters, tury that goes: "De la peste, dc la famine, especially those of Fouquet, Conde, and des garnisons de Bergues et de Gravelines, pre­ the king. 10 THE SHAPE OF FRANCE: GARDENS, FORTIFICATIONS, AND MODERN URBANISM

N THE LAST CHAPTER, I discussed the than one occasion that he would be glad word pourtraiture as it was employed in to receive it from him, but that gift was the garden treatises of the seventeenth never made. Perhaps Louis wanted it so I much precisely because it embodied what century and suggested that, through the methodical adjustment of geometry to he, despite his gloire, had never really ex­ scale that it was intended to describe, gar­ perienced firsthand: direct military vic­ --,. ^. den architects did draw, in fact, a "por­ tory, its special release and incomparable '*3 trait" of the order of the world upon its satisfactions. As a field commander, Louis .> ««. -*>*> .*$, ^ *• y~ * *"**j3ts «*^%** 73"V?r *?-££#' r^r< H? "*K r«v surface. At the same time, the word pour­ was never quite able to close with the traiture may be thought to enemy. The one chance he have a double meaning, had to do so he let slip since each of the gardens through his fingers. Unlike was intended to portray the the Due d'Enghien, who wtft . '-^fr * as* character of its client and to won his victory at Rocroi vS^I embody his own intentions. through reckless personal At Vaux, it was clearly the daring, Louis, despite his will of Fouquet as an indi­ often-demonstrated physi­ vidual that was portrayed cal courage, was never quite ;** and embodied in landscape. able to let himself go in that At Versailles, it was the 416. Mont-Louis, Frame. Fortifications. way. So all his victories • • v -• 3Q realm of Louis XIV, his Vauban. Air view. were in a sense secondhand. gloirc, which was the new France. And at And before we despise victory as a theme, Chantilly, it was surely Victory itself in we should remember that the Periclean the person of Le Grand Conde, especially Acropolis was about exactly that, the vic­ his decisive victory, as the Due d'Enghien, tory of Athens over everything. The Par­ at Rocroi, in 1643. thenon is hubris embodied, and so is Chantilly, but the fierce joy and the gran­ Chantilly is the garden everyone deur are no less for that. loved. It is the one even Louis most ad­ mired and, indeed, wanted for himself. These concepts may also be associated We know that he hinted to Conde on more with the intention to "forcer la nature"

401. Lucca. Fortifications. Curtain wall from flank of bastion.

215