Amboise

Amboise, Georges d', 1460-1510, French statesman, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He became archbishop of Rouen in 1493. In 1498, as an intimate friend of the new king, Louis XII, he became chief minister. Subsequently he was appointed cardinal and papal legate in France. He devoted himself primarily to the furtherance of Louis's ambitions in Italy and was lieutenant general in Italy at the conquest of Milan (1500). His ambitions for the papal crown were disappointed by the election of Pope Pius III (1503), but Pius's successor, Pope Julius II, designated him (1503) papal legate in France for life. He negotiated the treaties of Blois (1504) and helped form the League of Cambrai (1508; see Cambrai, League of). His domestic administration was beneficent. By his patronage of artists and writers, he contributed to the promotion of the Renaissance in France.

Amboise, Jacques d': see d'Amboise, Jacques.

Amboise, town (1991 pop. 10,972), Indre-et-Loire dept., N central France, in Touraine, on the Loire. It is a wine and wool market, and its manufactures include sporting goods, pharmaceuticals, and film and radio equipment. The town is chiefly famous, however, for its Gothic château, a royal residence from the reign of Charles VIII (who was born and died there) to that of Francis II. Leonardo da Vinci, who probably worked on it, is said to be buried in its chapel. Amboise was the scene (1560) of a Huguenot plot against the Guise family. Other old structures in the town include St. Denis Church (12th, 15th, 16th, and 17th cent.), St. Florentine Church (15th cent.), the town hall (16th cent.; restored), and the Clos-Lucé (15th cent.), where Francis I spent part of his youth and where da Vinci died.

Amboise, conspiracy of, 1560, plot of the Huguenots (French Protestants) and the house of Bourbon to usurp the power of the Guise family, which virtually ruled France during the reign of the young Francis II. The plan, presumably worked out by Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé, provided for a march on the castle of Amboise, the abduction of King Francis II, and the arrest of François, duc de Guise, and his brother Charles, cardinal of Lorraine. The cardinal was forewarned, and the rebels, beaten before they had united their forces, were ruthlessly massacred. For weeks the bodies of hundreds of conspirators were hanging from the castle and from every tree in the vicinity. The Huguenots were enraged. A brief period of conciliation followed under the chancellorship of Michel de L'Hôpital, appointed by the king's mother, Catherine de' Medici. He temporarily halted Protestant persecution until the outbreak (1562) of the Wars of Religion.

orig. Jacques Joseph Ahearn

(born July 28, 1934, Dedham, Mass., U.S.) U.S. dancer and choreographer. After studying at the School of American Ballet, he made his debut at age 12. He joined the New York City Ballet at age 15 and from the 1950s to the 1970s created leading roles in ballets such as Western Symphony (1954), Stars and Stripes (1958), and Who Cares? (1970). D'Amboise was admired for his athletic interpretations of both character and classical roles. He also performed in films. He later founded and directed the National Dance Institute, a nonprofit group dedicated to dance instruction in public schools.

Learn more about d'Amboise, Jacques with a free trial on Britannica.com.

orig. Jacques Joseph Ahearn

(born July 28, 1934, Dedham, Mass., U.S.) U.S. dancer and choreographer. After studying at the School of American Ballet, he made his debut at age 12. He joined the New York City Ballet at age 15 and from the 1950s to the 1970s created leading roles in ballets such as Western Symphony (1954), Stars and Stripes (1958), and Who Cares? (1970). D'Amboise was admired for his athletic interpretations of both character and classical roles. He also performed in films. He later founded and directed the National Dance Institute, a nonprofit group dedicated to dance instruction in public schools.

Learn more about d'Amboise, Jacques with a free trial on Britannica.com.

The royal Château at Amboise is a château located in Amboise, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France.

Built on a promontory overlooking the Loire River to control a strategic ford that was replaced in the Middle Ages by a bridge, the château began its life in the eleventh century, when the notorious Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, rebuilt the stronghold in stone. Expanded and improved over time, in the mid 1400s, it was seized (4 September 1434) by Charles VII, after its owner, Louis d'Amboise, was convicted of plotting against Louis XI and executed in 1431. Once in royal hands, the château became a favourite of French kings; Charles VIII decided to rebuild it extensively, beginning in 1492 at first in the French late Gothic Flamboyant style and then after 1495 employing two Italian mason-builders, Domenico da Cortona and Fra Giocondo, who provided at Amboise some of the first Renaissance decorative motifs seen in French architecture. The names of three French builders are preserved in the documents: Colin Biart, Guillaume Senault and Louis Armangeart. Amboise was the site where a garden laid out somewhat in the Italian manner was first seen in France: the site of the origin of the French formal garden. At the time of Charles VIII, an Italian priest, Pasello da Mercogliano, is credited with laying it out. Charles widened the upper terrace, to hold a larger parterre, enclosed with latticework and pavilions; round it Louis XII built a gallery, which can be seen in the 1576 engraving by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, in Les plus excellens bastimens de France. The parterres have been recreated in the twentieth century as rectangles of lawns set in gravel and a formal bosquet of trees.

King François I was raised at Amboise, which belonged to his mother, Louise of Savoy, and during the first few years of his reign the château reached the pinnacle of its glory. As a guest of the King, Leonardo da Vinci came to Château Amboise in December 1515 and lived and worked in the nearby Clos Lucé, connected to the château by an underground passage. Tourists are told that he is buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert, adjoining the Château, which had been built in 1491–96.

Henry II and his wife, Catherine de' Medici, raised their children in Château Amboise along with Mary Stuart, the child Queen of Scotland who had been promised in marriage to the future French Francis II.

In 1560, during the Wars of Religion, a conspiracy by members of the Huguenot House of Bourbon against the House of Guise that virtually ruled France in the name of the young Francis II was uncovered by the comte de Guise and stifled by a series of hangings, which took a month to carry out. By the time it was finished, 1200 Protestants were gibbetted, strung from the town walls, hung from the iron hooks that held pennants and tapestries on festive occasions and from the very balcony of the Logis du Roy. The Court soon had to leave the town because of the smell of corpses.

At Amboise the abortive peace of Amboise was signed, 12 March 1563, between Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, who had been implicated in the conspiracy to abduct the king, and Catherine de' Medici. The "edict of pacification", as it was termed, authorised Protestant services only in chapels of seigneurs and justices, with the stipulation that such services be held outside the walls of towns. Neither side was satisfied by this compromise, nor was it widely honored.

Amboise in decline

Amboise never returned to royal favour. At the beginning of the 17th century, the huge château was all but abandoned when the property passed into the hands of Gaston d'Orleans, the brother of the Bourbon King Louis XIII. After his death it returned to the Crown and was turned into a prison during the Fronde, and under Louis XIV of France it held disgraced minister Nicolas Fouquet and the duc de Lauzun. Louis XV made a gift of it to his minister the duc de Choiseul. During the French Revolution, the greater part of the château was demolished,a great deal more destruction was done, and an engineering assessment commissioned by Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte in the early 1800s resulted in a great deal of the château having to be demolished.

King Louis-Philippe began restoring it during his reign but with his abdication in 1848, the château was confiscated by the government and became for a while the home in exile to Emir Abd Al-Qadir (1848–53). In 1873, Louis-Philippe’s heirs were given control of the property and a major effort to repair it was made. However, during the invasion by the Nazis in 1940 the château was damaged further.

Since 1840, the Château d'Amboise has been listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. Today, the present comte de Paris, descendant of Louis-Philippe, repairs and maintains the château through the Fondation Saint-Louis.

Notes

See also

• List of castles in France

External links

• Château d'Amboise homepage
• Ministry of Culture database entry for Château d'Amboise
• Ministry of Culture photos
• Gardenvisit.com: Amboise
• Contemporary Landscape Inquiry Project: Amboise
• "L'histoire du château d'Amboise"
• Château d'Amboise photogallery