Episode 8 Inside Versailles

Bonjour. Welcome to Inside Versailles,

where we've seen some pretty strange things, including what looked

like a blood transfusion from animal to human.

From animal to human for Liselotte.

Actually, that was very common if you wanted to give

a blood transfusion, a very embryonic science at this point,

because if you put another human's blood into you, you could infuse

-with their soul. So sheep was thought to be safer.

-Yeah.

It's a new technology.

Basically, the first person to be dabbling in this is actually

Christopher Wren, back in England. But, as you say, here at the

court in Versailles, I think the name is Denis is the doctor and he has put, yeah, sheep blood into

a human and hasn't killed them, so that's success.

But I'm not sure it lasts very long as a technique,

because I think after a couple it goes quite horribly wrong.

But we are now here going to talk about some proper science because

this is an era in which Louis XIV is embracing science and we are

joined by a historian of science, Dr Rebekah Higgitt.

Hello. So, yeah, when it comes to science,

Louis XIV perhaps comes in at the end of, or the culmination of,

what often gets called the scientific revolution, that's really

been going for the last couple of centuries, a very slow revolution.

But Louis definitely jumps on board the idea that he can be

patron of something that can really show him off internationally.

So, yeah, he's closely involved.

So Louis is all about spectacle and power and we often think about him

using culture, the arts, theatre to extend this.

But science is an even more effective way of extending it,

because it's almost like they're involved in this kind of space race,

-a scientific race.

-Absolutely.

He gets the best scientists, finds out the things

-the fastest and therefore proves his pre-eminence in Europe.

-Absolutely.

And this is a picture of him visiting the Academie de Sciences,

which he set up just after the Royal Society in London had been

formed, who have quite a large membership, people who pay themselves to become fellows,

if they're the right sort of person. Whereas here we have a much more select group of people who

are selected by Colbert, the first minister, and by Louis,

and they are then paid pensions.

The other thing that's intriguing to me is at the centre of this

painting, apart from the king, we've got a churchman.

Now science, obviously, we might think

is sort of rational and scientific.

-And yet, here at the centre, is a man of God.

-Absolutely.

I mean, science isn't really the term that would have been used at the time.

They're talking about philosophy, natural philosophy,

experimental philosophy and then the disciplines like astronomy

and mathematics and so on.

So, it's a different kind of entity than the way we think about it now.

So we find a number of clergymen in this image.

We've got the secretary of the academy there,

being presented by Colbert to Louis, but there are others, as well -

Abbe Picard, who is among the members of the academy that

you can see there, and he did a lot of surveying work.

He surveyed the area around Versailles,

he also began surveying the whole of France.

And Picard is obviously also involved in the layout of the gardens

and the fountains, as well. I mean, that's not quite his gig,

but he has been brought on board to help out with that.

The survey tells you about the lay of the terrain,

so you can work out if it's possible to run water,

water doesn't really run uphill, and Versailles is on a hill.

It's ridiculous.

So, you know, Louis wants to do it and show off the sheer cost,

the power, the manpower in trying to get water to create the

fountains in the gardens.

Were there any awkward problems where science actually

hindered Louis's sort of image?

I'm thinking of a quote where he said his mappers had removed land...

Right, yeah.

The astronomers La Hire and Picard used new astronomical techniques to

map the coastlines of France more accurately than has been known,

and, when they remapped it,

they actually brought the coastline in considerably further to

the east, which meant there was actually a lot less land.

So, yes, Louis is said to have quipped that his astronomers

have lost him more land than his generals ever did.

And, just looking at the clock,

I know that Marin Mersenne was a theologian

who came up with the second pendulum,

which gives you accurate clocks for the first time.

Is it just nice to have a clock or is it actually useful, as well?

Incredibly useful. So, people like Galileo, Mersenne

and also Christiaan Huygens here combined to develop

something that is really a scientific instrument

for the first time,

rather than just being something that kind of backs up your sundial.

They become absolutely essential to astronomy in particular.

Astronomy can't be particularly scientific until you can really

time accurately the motions of the heavens when you're observing them.

So it is crucial to the foundation of the observatory there to

make astronomy more accurate, and all of that feeds into navigation.

But Versailles itself really became a centre for science.

Scientific experiments really did happen there,

including the one we saw in episode one,

-so shall we go and talk a bit more about it over here?

-OK.

So, what's going on here?

Cos you've got this big glass mirror that we saw in episode one,

and that sounds pretty impressive.

Did it actually really happen like this?

It happened at Versailles

and certainly impressed Louis a great deal.

So we have a huge mirror that is focusing the sun's rays to

create a great deal of heat that will actually cause combustion.

And also at this period,

we find that solar eclipses particularly are something

that the astronomy of the period had become accurate enough to be

able to predict with quite a lot of certainty exactly when an

eclipse would happen and exactly where.

That had always been the question.

So the fact that they could predict it and then Louis could appear

to almost be in control of this spectacle

was another good coup for him.

-Send everyone out wearing those sunglasses.

-Yeah.

We do know that by the time eclipses... Certainly, say, the 1715 eclipse, that was seen

widely in Britain, it was much talked about in advance.

Edmond Halley sent out broadsheets so that people would know it was going to happen.

So lots of people were prepared with smoked glasses or tinted lenses,

potentially endangering their eyes quite a lot.

But we do know that in the 17th century there were tinted

lenses for various reasons, whether it was to protect the eyes,

whether it was for sun or snow, so they did certainly exist.

Well, that has been absolutely fascinating.

A gripping insight into science at the Court of the King.

Thank you so much, Rebekah, for joining us.

Fascinating insight into science.

And thank you for joining us again on Inside Versailles.

-Bonsoir.

-Bonsoir.