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At the end of the reign of Louis XIV Fr. de Harlay-Chauvallon, Archbishop of Paris, bought the property of Richelieu, and, with the aid of Mansart and Le Notre, considerably embellished it within and without. Madame de Sévigné, in one of her many published letters, writes of the splendours which she saw at Conflans at this epoch.
He exercised a great hospitality and lived the life of an opulent bourgeois, but he destroyed most of the outbuildings and the stables built by Mansart, and cut up the great expanse of park which originally consisted of five hundred hectares. His ideas were purely commercial, not the least esthetic.
Basins and canals and other restrained surfaces of water began to appear on a larger scale, and greater insistence was put upon their proportions with regard to the decorative part which they were to play in the ensemble. This was the preparatory period of the coming into being of the works of Le Notre and Mansart.
His father, the Seigneur de Mansart, had done great services in the war of independence, had been an intimate friend of the great Prince of Orange, and had even advanced large sums of money to assist his noble efforts to liberate the country. Two brothers of the young captain had fallen in the service of the republic.
The architect of this portion of the chateau was Jean Aubert, one of the collaborators of Jules Hardouin Mansart.
The works were so far completed in 1664 that the first Versailles fête was given to consecrate the palace. In honour of this event Molière composed "La Princesse d'Elide." The improvements, however, were continued, and in 1670, Levau, dying, was succeeded by his nephew, Jules Hardouin Mansart, who wished to destroy the chateau of Louis XIII and erect one uniform building.
The Tomb of Napoleon, under the magnificent dome of the Invalides, which was added to the original church by Jules Hardouin Mansart, and is treated as a separate building, is entered from the Place Vauban at the back, or by the left cloister and a court beyond.
Cloud, set on fire by the bombs of Mont-Valerien, in the night of October 13, 1870, and now the most melancholy of ruins. Sufficient, however, remains to indicate the noble character of a building partly due to Jules Hardouin and Mansart.
The portico is more recent, being after a design by Mansart de Jouy, and erected in 1754: combining altogether a most incongruous mixture of styles and orders of architecture, originally commenced with the design that it should be a sort of mixed gothic, of which the southern door and front bear evidence, whilst the western portico has doric and ionic columns, and at the northern end are corinthian pillars, notwithstanding it is a bold imposing structure, and the interior has the appearance of a fine abbey, and is a monument which every stranger ought to visit.
His father, the Seigneur de Mansart, had done great services in the war of independence, had been an intimate friend of the great Prince of Orange, and had even advanced large sums of money to assist his noble efforts to liberate the country. Two brothers of the young captain had fallen in the service of the republic.
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