As the European powers expanded their empires, European monarchs were able to stock their animal collections from all corners of the world.
Royal menageries were popular with royalty, but when the French king established one at the largest and most splendid of his palaces, the menagerie and its occupants became fashionable. In the s, male followers of fashion were wearing suits with zebra stripes.
It all began in the th century. At that time Versailles was a village miles ( km) southwest of Paris. Louis XIV (–), known as the Sun King (le roi soleil), enjoyed hunting in the royal forest around Versailles, staying at a hunting lodge that his father had built there in . Louis decided it would be an appropriate
The palace of Versailles was built in 1624 as a hunting lodge and expanded into a palace in 1669. It was the offi cial residence of French kings from 1682 until 1790. As well as the formal gardens, its grounds held the royal menagerie, which was a precursor of modern zoological gardens. (Rosine Mazin/Photo Researchers)
place to relocate his entire court. First, though, he needed a palace, and in he commissioned the architect Louis Le Vau (–) to design the buildings, Charles le Brun (–) to design the interiors, and André Le Nôtre (–) to design the surrounding landscape and gardens. Th e court began moving to the new palace at Versailles in . Th e move was complete and the court offi cially installed there on May , . Th e illustration on page shows the palace as it is today.
Th e palace was certainly large, dwarfi ng Nero’s Golden House (see
“Nero and the Grounds of His Golden House” on pages –). It had
rooms with staircases and a total fl oor area of , square feet (, m). Th e roof area covered acres ( ha), and there were more than , windows.
Th ere was also a menagerie. Work on that began in , and the fi rst animals arrived the following year. Th e grounds around the Versailles palace contained a number of pleasure houses—buildings used exclusively for entertainment—and the menagerie centered on the fi rst of these to be built, the Pavillon de la Lanterne (Lantern Pavilion). Th e Sun King’s animals were to be primarily entertainers.
Visitors entered the building through a forecourt. Inside, a stair- case led to an upper fl oor, with rooms to the left and right and a central passage leading to the eight-sided Lantern Pavilion, which contained a single room. Th e passage entered the pavilion at one of its sides. Windows in the remaining seven sides opened onto balconies overlooking an octagonal courtyard that surrounded the pavilion on seven sides. Each section of the courtyard held an animal enclosure.
A staircase inside the pavilion led to a ground fl oor decorated with seashells to resemble a grotto, from where visitors could enter the center of the courtyard to view the animals at closer quarters. Th ere were six marble columns in the courtyard, each with a fountain.
Th e animal enclosures were no less elaborate. Th ey were planted with grass and contained ponds, fountains, and buildings to shelter the animals, iron railings and walls separated each enclosure from its neighbors, and classical architecture ornamented the rear walls.
When it opened, the menagerie contained mainly exotic birds, but there was also accommodation for horses, gazelles, and other large mammals. Early in the th century Louis expanded the menagerie by adding another set of enclosures to house lions, tigers, leopards, and other species.
Life at the court of the Sun King was ruled by elaborate and infl exible rules of etiquette, so that excessively polite courtiers spent their days performing rituals that were almost theatrical. Th e king loved theatrical performances and would often hold them in the grounds. Th ey usually began with a procession led by the king and queen, followed by displays in which actors and musicians portrayed themes from classical literature or the seasons of the year, assisted by animals from the menagerie.
Although entertainment was the principal purpose of the menag- erie, as the years passed and the size of its collection grew, the ani- mals became the subjects of much scientifi c research. At its peak, the Versailles menagerie housed species. Louis XIV died in , and Versailles became the property of Louis XV (–), his successor.
With the change of monarch, the fortunes of the menagerie began to wane. Louis XV had little interest in the animals and, because it was the king who dictated the fashion, the menagerie ceased to be fash- ionable. By the time Louis XVI (–) came to the throne in , the menagerie and its buildings were in a poor condition. As the ani- mals went out of fashion, so the funds to care for them dwindled.
Following the French Revolution of , there was popular resentment against the Versailles menagerie. Why should these ani- mals live in luxury, revolutionaries asked, while people are starving?
Th e palace of Versailles was in the hands of the revolutionaries, and in a crowd arrived at the entrance to the menagerie demanding that the imprisoned animals be set free. Th e director of the menag- erie pointed out that if certain of the animals were to be released, their fi rst action would likely be to devour their liberators. So the lions, tigers, and other large carnivores remained behind bars. Some animals were released, and others were killed. According to Bob Mulland and Garry Marvin, in their book Zoo Culture, this is the only recorded instance in history of a popular attempt to free zoo animals.
Some of the animals were left behind, and the Versailles estate manager arranged with Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (–), the writer and botanist who had been director of the Jardin des Plantes (botanical garden) since , to have these trans- ferred to his charge. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had been urging the authorities to allow him to establish a national menagerie at the gar- dens, so he welcomed the news.
Th e botanical garden, covering acres ( ha) began in
as the Jardin du Roi (royal garden), growing medicinal and culinary herbs and located beside the River Seine in the center of Paris. After the revolution its name was changed to the Jardin des Plantes, and in
the National Assembly ordered the creation of a menagerie in the garden, decreeing that all exotic animals in private hands, includ- ing animals belonging to circuses, fairs, other traveling shows, and street performers as well as wealthy collectors, must be given to the national menagerie either alive or stuff ed. By the middle of the th century, the national menagerie held the largest animal collection in Europe. It was open to the public from the start and entrance was free, but scientifi c research was its primary purpose. It had ceased to be a menagerie and had become the world’s fi rst zoo (see the side- bar “Th e Diff erence between a Menagerie and a Zoo” on page ).
Th e zoo is now part of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (National Natural History Museum).
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Aesop was a slave who lived in Greece from 620 B.C.E to
... He told very brief and often amusing stories about animals and sometimes about plants that have been translated into most languages. Over the centuries Aesop’s fables have delighted many generations of children and inspired many authors.
Each of his tales carries a message. For example, an ass and a lion formed an alliance to capture other animals as prey. Th e ass gave the lion the benefi t of his greater speed and the lion contributed his strength. After they had caught a number of animals, the lion divided the spoils into three shares. Th e lion said he would take the fi rst share, because he was king of the beasts. He would also take the second share, due to him as a partner in the hunt. Th e third share, he explained, would become a source of great evil to the ass unless the ass relinquished any claim to it and made off as fast as he could. Th e moral? Might makes right. Another fable tells of some pigeons that were terrifi ed when a kite appeared and called on the hawk to protect them. Th e hawk agreed, but as soon as the pigeons admitted him into their dovecote the hawk killed more of them in one day than the kite would have killed in a year. Th e moral? Beware that the remedy is not worse than the disease. One of the most famous of Aesop’s fables con- cerns a crow that had stolen a piece of meat and taken it to her perch high in a tree when a fox determined to take it from her. Th e fox fl attered the crow, expressing admiration for her shape and plumage, but lamenting that if only her voice could match her appearance she
Travelers’ Tales
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would undoubtedly be regarded as the queen of birds. Determined to show that her voice was the equal of any bird, the crow opened her bill and let out a loud cry. Th is made her drop the meat, which the fox seized. Th e fox told the crow that her voice was good enough, but she lacked wits.
Th ere are hundreds of these fables in which animals and plants possess certain human characteristics. No animal is completely human, but each one exemplifi es a particular trait. Th e fox is always cunning, the lion is strong, the wolf is rapacious, the dog is obedient, ants are industrious, and so on. Aesop may have been the fi rst Euro- pean storyteller to derive moral lessons from the supposed behavior of animals, but his fables succeeded only because people had always attributed human traits to particular animals. It is almost impossible not to regard household pets as almost human and to see human characteristics in other species. Many everyday expressions refl ect this. Someone in a bad temper is “like a bear with a sore head.” An especially nimble thief is a “cat burglar.” A person who refuses to see danger that is obvious to everyone else is said to be burying his head in the sand—“like an ostrich.” A deceitful person is “a snake in the grass” and one who is working hard and persistently at a diffi cult task is said to be “beavering away.”
Metaphors apart, animals that talk and give moral advice are nowadays confi ned mainly to fairy tales and other children’s stories, but in the Middle Ages grown-ups took them seriously. In those days, animal stories illustrated Christian teaching, and this chapter tells a few of those stories. It begins by explaining the context in which the stories arose and ends more recently, with the diffi culties zoolo- gists faced when for the fi rst time they encountered and attempted to classify an animal that refused to fi t into any of their existing categories.