In 1635 the Grand Chancellor of Sweden signed a treaty here which enabled France to mingle in the affairs of the Thirty Years' War.
During the Fronde, that "Woman's War," which was so entirely unnecessary, Anne d'Autriche held her court in the Palace of Compiègne and received Christine de Suede on certain occasions when that royal lady's costume was of such a grotesque nature, and her speech so _chevaleresque_, that she caused even a scandal in a profligate court. Anne d'Autriche, too, left Compiègne practically a prisoner; another _ménage à trois_ had been broken up.
The most imposing event in the history of Compiègne of which the chronicles tell was the assembling of sixty thousand men beneath the walls by Louis XIV, in order to give Madame de Maintenon a realistic exhibition of "playing soldiers." At all events the demonstration was a bloodless one, and an immortal page in Saint-Simon's "Memoires" consecrates this gallantry of a king in a most subtle manner.
Another fair lady, a royal favourite, too, came on the scene at Compiègne in 1769 when Madame du Barry was the principal _artiste_ in the great fête given in her honour by Louis XV. She was lodged in a tiny chateau (built originally for Madame de Pompadour) a short way out of town on the Soissons road.
Du Barry must have been a good fairy to Compiègne for Louis XV lavished an abounding care on the chateau and, rather than allow the architect, Jacques Ange Gabriel, have the free hand that his counsellors advised, sought to have the ancient outlines of the former structure on the site preserved and thus present to posterity through the newer work the two monumental façades which are to be seen to-day. The effort was not wholly successful, for the architect actually did carry out his fancy with respect to the decoration in the same manner in which he had designed the École Militaire at Paris and the two colonnaded edifices facing upon the Place de la Concorde.
This work was entirely achieved when Louis XVI took possession. This monarch, in 1780, caused to be fitted up a most elaborate apartment for the queen (his marriage with Marie Antoinette was consecrated here), but that indeed was all the hand he had in the work of building at Compiègne, which has practically endured as his predecessor left it. The Revolution and Consulate used the chateau as their fancy willed, and rather harshly, but in 1806 its restoration was begun and Charles IV of Spain, upon his dethronement by Napoleon, was installed therein a couple of years later.