Castle of Saint-Leu

The castle of Saint-Leu was located at Saint-Leu-the-Forest (Val-d'Oise).

Before the French revolution, the village of Saint-Leu-the-Forest counted two castles:

the castle of in top, demolished and rebuilt in the middle of the 17th century;
the castle of in bottom, built in 1693 for Lorieul of the Valley, Secretary of the King.

The castle of in bottom was acquired in 1774 with president Droin by the financier Jean-Joseph de Laborde, who wished to have a residence less distant from Paris than his Château of Ferté-Vidame (the weather was to be later on during the acquisition of the Château of Méréville). It made transform the castle and arrange a landscaped garden, traversed by a river leaving a large rock. A small rectangular temple and a wood bridge crossing the river, on which one could circulate in boat, decorated this garden.

In 1777, Laborde yielded the field to the financier Nicolas Beaujon. This one resold it in 1780 with the duke of Chartres, future Philippe Égalité that the countess of Genlis, “governor” of the education of his children, had convinced to acquire a field close to Paris where it can remain with the young princes during the summer period to deal with their formation.

In 1804, Louis Bonaparte and his wife, Hortense de Beauharnais, acquired of the castle of in top and the castle of in bottom. They made demolish the first and joined together the two fields to form a park of approximately 80 hectares. The park was then altered by Louis-Martin Berthault, which also worked with the Château of Malmaison. The upper part decorated factories (a Swiss valley with thatched cottages, the bridge of the devil on a boxed way, an Egyptian monument) while three ponds were created in the lower part. This garden is known by engravings such that of Constant Middle-class man.

After its separation of with her husband (who took the title of “count de Saint-Leu”), in 1810, the Hortense queen preserved Saint-Leu, where it gave brilliant festivals. In 1814, Louis XVIII did it duchess of Saint-Leu but, in 1815, shown to have helped to prepare the return of Napoleon i, it took the way of the exile and had to give up Saint-Leu.

In 1816, the field was acquired by Louis VI Henri de Bourbon-Cop, duke of Bourbon, prince de Condé in 1818, which wished to have a residence in skirt of forest of Montmorency, which belonged to him. It settled there with its mistress, the intrigante Baronne of Feuchères.

In 1830, the prince was found hung with the catch of the window of its room, on the first floor of the castle. Even if its mistress, with whom it left an important fortune, were suspected of murder, she was not continued, justice not having been able to show that the death of the prince was not natural.

Heiress of the castle, the baroness of Feuchères, in hillock with the local hostility after this resounding event, was not long in reselling it. But, the maintenance of the field proving very expensive, the castle was demolished in 1837 and the park was parcelled out.

In June 1844, a memorial was high with the memory of prince de Condé. The cross which surmounts it is supposed to indicate the precise place where the catch was to which it was found hung. This monument always exists. Park of the castle do not remain, on the other hand, that weak vestiges.

References

External bonds

Personal site devoted to the parks with factories: page on Saint-Leu
Site of the commune of Saint-Leu-the-Forest

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