page_title: Château de Maulnes
section_title: The Louvois period (1697 - 1844)
hierarchical_section_title: Château de Maulnes / History / The Louvois period (1697 - 1844)
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Château de Maulnes, Yonne - carte de Cassini
context_page_description: The château de Maulnes, is a 16th-century, Renaissance-style château located in Cruzy-le-Châtel in the department of Yonne, France.
  This château was built between 1566 and 1573 and has several unique design features. For example, it has a novel pentagonal-shaped house and is buttressed by five towers, and has a centrally located well surrounded by a spiral staircase.
  During the 20th century, the château was in an advanced state of disrepair. In 1942, the château was classified as a historic monument and in 1997 it was purchased by the Conseil General of Yonne. It has since been the focus of historical and archaeological research and restoration. In 2005, the château was made open to the public.
context_section_description: Between 1683 and 1685, François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois bought Tonnerre county from François-Joseph Clermont, the grandson of Francis and the grand-nephew of Roger. Louvois was well known for his role as the French Secretary of State for War.
  Louvois died in 1691 and his widow, Anne de Souvré maintained possession of Tonnerre county. In June 1697, Anne bought Maulnes and Cruzy from Roger's son, who was experiencing financial difficulties, and thus taking possession of the château de Maulnes and reuniting Charles-Henri's divided estate.
  Anne de Souvré drew a detailed map of the forest Maulnes and died in December 1715. The estate is settled six years later, and Maulnes was again abandoned.
  In 1721, the eldest son of Louvois, Michel-François Le Tellier marquis Courtanvaux, inherited Tonnerre County, but he died soon thereafter. His daughter, Anne-Louise de Noailles, received temporary guardianship until his two-year-old son, Francis Tellier Caesar Courtanvaux, became an adult.
  In 1723, the royal council of finance authorized timber to float from Maulnes to Paris by the Armançon, Yonne and the Seine rivers. As a consequence, a small community of workers formed around the château. As an adult, Francis continued the timber operations.
  In 1775, the timber merchants near the château received permission from the Marquis to start a glassworks industry, which was more profitable than selling timber. This industry transformation significantly changed the landscape of Maulnes with the gradual clearing of the forest and the growth of the community.
  In 1781, the Marquis died with no direct heir. His cousin Louis-Sophie Le Tellier Souvré, son of François-Louis Le Tellier, became Count of Tonnerre. He died in debt four years later and his widow Jeanne Marie Henriette Bombelles Victory supervised the estate on behalf of her two-year-old son. Both survived the French Revolution and the abolition of French feudalism and regained the property and she managed it until her death in 1822.
  In 1806, a note drafted by the subprefect of Tonnerre described the processes and in the production of Maulnes glassware, specifically mentioning production of 300,000 bottles per year. This production could only occur 6 months out of the year due to timber limitations of the forest of Maulnes.
  When he took over the management of glassware in 1819, Louis Le Tellier Souvré became a peer of France under the Restoration. In 1804, his son, Auguste Felicite Michel Le Tellier, married Athénaïs Grimaldi of Monaco, daughter of Joseph Grimaldi and niece of the Prince of Monaco Grimaldi Honoré IV.
  In 1819, production doubled and the local glassware industry was employing a hundred workers, in addition to the loggers and valets.
  In 1824 the Maulnes estate was rented to a master came glassmaker from Bayel, François Vallory. In 1834, the financially ruined Marquis de Louvois sold Maulnes, including the château, to the glassmaker. In 1844, François closed the estate, facing his own financial difficulties.
caption: Maulnes (near image center) on an 18th-century Cassini map
exif: {"Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image ExifOffset": "50", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "288", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9258", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:09:22 19:30:16", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "158", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "41683a5868197c5b75184b67ca099a7e"}