Weekend tips: Château Vaux le Vicomte and the instructive story of its wealthy founder

A visit to the astonishing Château Vaux le Vicomte, approximately one hour driving from Paris, is not just a way to live for at least a couple of hours a beautiful dream made of silence, solemn serenity and endless prosperity. It is also a way to realize that financial scandals are unavoidable and that is never easy to explain the side effects of the struggle for power.

 

This extraordinary property was created in twenty years by a brilliant finance minister of Louis XIV, Nicolas Fouquet, thanks to the help of some of the best creative minds living in France at that time: architect Louis Le Vau, artist Charles Le Brun – who supervised the decoration of the castle –, and gardener André Le Nôtre, whose most famous achievement was the gardens at Versailles.

 

The result was an extraordinary balanced composition expressing the sophisticated taste of the commitment and his prominent position at the court of the King of France, where he was known as a supporter of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin, but also as an intrepid financial operator, always walking the thin line between what is regular and what is not.

 

The problems for Fouquet started in March 1661, after Mazarin’s death, when another protégé of the Cardinal, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, sought to succeed Fouquet as finance minister by destroying his reputation with the King. In a few months, perfectly knowing all the financial crimes committed by Mazarin – of whom he was the personal intendant –, and after having destroyed the evidences that would have proved Fouquet’s innocence, Colbert ended up directly accusing him for embezzlement.

 

On September of that year Fouquet was arrested in Nantes by D’Artagnan, captain of the Musketeers, and brought with a big public scandal before a specially convened emergency court.

The trial last three years. Fouquet used all his influence to defend himself from the accusations, and finally the judges voted for his banishment, allowing him to remain free, but outside the kingdom. But this half-victory for Fouquet did not last. For the one and only time in French history, the King “commuted” the sentence to life imprisonment. Fouquet was taken to the fortress of Pignerol, where he died just before a measure of clemency could be issued.

November 25, 2020