The parisian carousel of 1662

The 17th century is the heyday of pageants and tournaments. These events were based on an allegorical theme, to commemorate a memorable event, and the participants, wearing special costumes for the occasion, would perform a sequence of movements and figures to music. This is how the famous carousel of 1662 comes across to us from pictorial sources and contemporary eye witness reports.

These productions, the origins of which go back to Renaissance Italy, had familiar precursors in France. In 1612 the great carousel Roman des Chevaliers de la Gloire, including - in the Italian style - a procession of mechanical cars, wild beasts and also tournaments, was put on the mark the double betrothals of Louis XIII to the Infanta of Spain and his sister to the Infante.

Course de testes et de bague, faittes par le Roy et par les Princes et Seigneurs de sa cour, en l'année 1662 celebrates the birth of an heir to the throne and is the first festival in the reign of Louis XIV, at that time 25 years old. The engraver Israël Silvestre was commissioned to produce plates commemorating the dazzling pageantry, just as Jacques Callot had immortalised the ballet La Guerra di Belleza ('The War of Beauty') in Florence in 1616.

This carousel collection, published in 1670, was the first production to come off the presses of the "Royal Printing Office". It was published in French (words by Charles Perrault) and Latin. The 37 plates had been commissioned from Le Pautre, Rousselet, Chauveau and Henri de Gissey, the regular designer of The Pleasures and Ballets of the King, who had created all the costumes.

Like the great festivals in the reign of Louis XIV, the 1662 carousel was above all intended to extol the rising glory of the young ruler in allegorical form, to an accompaniment of music and dancing. Colbert arranged the whole thing in collaboration with architects, artists and contractors. The chosen venue was between the Tuileries Palace and the back of the Louvre, in Parterre de Mademoiselle, which Vigarani had converted for the occasion into a large, square arena bounded by steps and tribunes for nearly 15,000 spectators.

The festivities lasted for two days, 5th and 6th June 1662. They began with a long procession from "Hôtel Vendosme to the amphitheatre entrance...", regaling the people of Paris with sumptuous, beautifully decorated costumes worn by 1,297 participants, 655 of them on horseback. They were divided into five main groups, Le Quadrille des Romains, dressed in bright red and black, was led by the King himself. The plates of the album and the description by Perrault and Claude Menestrier (Traité des Tournois, Joustes, Carrousels et autres spectacles publics, Lyon, 1669) depict him

dressed like a Roman in a long coat embroidered with silver and gold... on his head a silver helmet covered with gold leaf... from which there rises a crest of ostrich plumes dyed red...

Diamonds all over the horse's caparison enlivened the royal costume. The sovereign's retinue was no less brilliantly dressed. The members of Le Quadrille persan, commanded by Philip of Orleans, the King's brother, whose colours were bright red and white, were dressed in a kind of oriental costume, with turbans on their heads. Le Quadrille des Turcs, in blue and black, followed the Prince of Condé.

Le Quadrille des Indiens was commanded by his son the Duke of Enghien in a composition of "flesh colour and yellow". Behind the Duke of Guise, wearing a burgonet helmet the shape of a chimera, there came a motley group, Le Quadrille des Américains - an eclectic gathering of "savages", "Moors" (accompanied by monkeys), clad in feathers. Each of the knights had a device on his shield. This, according to Voltaire, was the first occasion on which the King employed, together with the solar emblem, the famous device NEC PLURIBUS IMPAR ('Above all others').

The first day, which had begun with this impressive procession, was devoted to "tilting at a Turk's head and a Medusa head", which meant that, in addition to the complexities of the mounted ballet, the riders had to tilt at the quintain - a dummy resembling an oriental warrior.

The plates in Manège Royal by Antoine de Pluvinel, Paris, 1623, engraved by Crispin de Passe on the instructions of the Pluvinel, Master of Horse to Louis XIII, show the young Louis XIII attacking a dummy of this kind in similar fashion a few years earlier. All the European courts of the age were familar with this kind of amusement (e.g. the famous "Saracino" in Florence under the Grand Dukes).

The second day was given over to running at the ring, an exercise which involved catching on the point of one's lance, and at the gallop, a ring suspended from the end of a tall gallows. Voltaire records that the prize on this occasion was won by the Count of Sault, son of the Duke of Lesdiguière, and presented to him by the Queen Dowager.

This event, glorified by artists and authors, was long remembered. Its purpose, no doubt, was not solely to improve Louis XIV's talents for dancing and the arts of chivalry or to gratify his theatrical inclinations. In his Memories pour l'instruction du Dauphin, he notes:

A prince and King of France should also consider that there is something more in this public entertainment which is not so much for us ourselves as for the whole court and the whole of our people.

Behind this public display one glimpses more realistically founded, political intensions. The King turns outwards, presenting himself to his people dressed in archaic costume - like a certain, remote recollection of the suits of armour "alla antica romana" which Renaissance princes loved to dress up in, as an invocation of the imperial idea and the cult associated with it.

This brilliant, lively and exotic festival, the first of Louis XIV's reign, was to be followed by other pageants, no less brilliant, also intended to highlight the royal personage, a political event or the favourite of the hour. The three Versailles festivals which followed in mythological guise celebrated the glory of the King. In 1664 came Les plaisirs de l'Isle enchantée, a tribute to Mademoiselle de la Vallière. Le Grand divertissement royal in 1668 was put on to celebrate the favour enjoyed by Madame de Montespan and to acclaim the Peace of Aix-le-Chapelle, and the great festivities of 1674, Divertissements de Versailles..., invoked the King's victories.