The Machine de Marly, also known as the Marly Machine or the Machine of Marly, was a large hydraulic system in

Yvelines Yvelines () is a Departments of France, department in the western part of the Île-de-France Regions of France, region in Northern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,448,207.France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, built in 1684 to

pump A pump is a device that moves fluids (liquids or gases), or sometimes slurries, by mechanical action, typically converted from electrical energy into hydraulic energy. Pumps can be classified into three major groups according to the method they ...

water from the river

Seine ) , mouth_location = Le Havre/ Honfleur , mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , river_system = Seine basin , basin_size = , tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle , tributa ...

and deliver it to the

Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

.Thompson 2006, p. 251.

King Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...

needed a large water supply for his

fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were ori ...

s at Versailles. Before the Marly Machine was built, the amount of water delivered to Versailles already exceeded that used by the city of

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, but this was insufficient, and fountain-rationing was necessary. Ironically most of the water pumped by the Marly Machine ended up being used to develop a new garden at the

Château de Marly The Château de Marly was a French royal residence located in what is now Marly-le-Roi, the commune on the northern edge of the royal park. This was situated west of the palace and garden complex at Versailles. Marly-le-Roi is the town that develo ...

. However, even if all the water pumped at Marly (an average of per day) had been supplied to Versailles, it still would not have been enough: the fountains running ''à l'ordinaire'' (that is, at half pressure) required at least four times as much. The Machine de Marly, based on a prototype at the Château de Modave, consisted of fourteen gigantic

water wheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...

s, each roughly in diameter,Pendery 2004. that powered more than 250 pumps to bring water up a hillside from the

River to the Louveciennes Aqueduct. Louis XIV had countless schemes and inventions that were supposed to bring water to his fountains. The Machine de Marly was by far his most extensive and costly plan. After three years of construction and a cost of approximately 5,500,000

livres The (; ; abbreviation: ₶.) was one of numerous currencies used in medieval France, and a unit of account (i.e., a monetary unit used in accounting) used in Early Modern France. The 1262 monetary reform established the as 20 , or 80.88 g ...

, the massive contraption, considered the most complex of the 17th century, was completed. "The chief engineer for the project was Arnold de Ville and the 'contractor' was

Rennequin Sualem Rennequin Sualem (1645 − 1708) was a Walloon carpenter and engineer born on 29 January 1645 in Jemeppe-sur-Meuse, in what now is Wallonia, Belgium. His given name sometimes appears as 'Renkin'. Achievements In 1667−68 the lieutenant-govern ...

(after whom the quai by the machine is now named)." Both men had experience in pumping water from coal mines in the region of

Liège Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far fro ...

(in modern Belgium). The machine suffered from frequent breakdowns, required a permanent staff of sixty to maintain and often required costly repairs. It functioned for 133 years. Destroyed in 1817, it was replaced by a "machine temporaire" during 10 years and then a steam engine entered in service from 1827 to 1859. From 1859 to 1963, the pumping at Marly was assumed by another hydraulic machine conceived by the engineer Xavier Dufrayer. Dufrayer's machine was scrapped in 1968 and replaced by electromechanical pumps.

Historical context

From the beginning, the construction of the château and the park of Versailles water supply had posed a problem. The site chosen by Louis XIV, a former hunting lodge of Louis XIII, was far removed from any river and high in elevation. The sovereign's will to have a park with more and more basins, water jets and fountains became a hallmark of his reign by the extension and improvement of a permanent water supply system with the construction of new pumps, aqueducts and

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contr ...

s to collect ever more water, from a greater and greater distance. The idea to bring water from the Seine to Versailles had always been under consideration. But more than just the distance – the river is located nearly 10 km from the château – there was the problem of the elevation to ascend, nearly . Since 1670,

Jean-Baptiste Colbert Jean-Baptiste Colbert (; 29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) was a French statesman who served as First Minister of State from 1661 until his death in 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His lasting impact on the organization of the country ...

, Louis XIV's Superintendent of the

King's Buildings The King's Buildings (colloquially known as just King's or KB) is a campus of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Located in the suburb of Blackford, the site contains most of the schools within the College of Science and Engineering, ex ...

, had opposed several projects, including one proposed by , both for reasons of feasibility and that of cost.Bentz & Soullard 2011. Arnold de Ville (1653–1722), a young and ambitious bourgeois of

Huy Huy ( or ; nl, Hoei, ; wa, Hu) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium. Huy lies along the river Meuse, at the mouth of the small river Hoyoux. It is in the ''sillon industriel'', the former industrial ...

in the Province of Liège, who had already built a pump in Saint-Maur, succeeded in submitting to the king his project for pumping the waters of the River Seine to the Château of Val in the forest of Saint-Germain, demonstrating that the same could be done to supply Versailles. This machine, a sort of small scale model of what the Machine of Marly could be, impressed the king,Testard-Vallant 2010, pp. 70–71. who then entrusted him with the development of a machine on the Seine to supply not only the gardens of Versailles, but also those of the Chateau of Marly then under construction.

Location

The Machine de Marly site is located north of the Château de Versailles and west of the center of Paris, on the Seine in the

Yvelines Yvelines () is a Departments of France, department in the western part of the Île-de-France Regions of France, region in Northern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,448,207.department. The river pumps and administration buildings are located in what is now the town of Bougival; relay pumps, machinery, the aqueduct and reservoirs are located in

Louveciennes Louveciennes () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and adjacent to Marly-le-Roi. Populat ...

. One reservoir is in the town of

Marly-le-Roi Marly-le-Roi () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the administrative region of Île-de-France, France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the centre of Paris. Marly-le-Roi was the location of the Château de Marly, t ...

. Between Port-Marly and

Bezons Bezons () is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Population Transport An extension of the tramway line T2 to Pont de Bezons opened in 2012. With Bezons not served by any stations ...

, the Seine, along its length, was divided into two arms by a series of islands and earth berms linked together by timber/rock dikes to form two disconnected, parallel river beds over in length. The hydraulic pumping machinery, propelling the river water to the top of the hill that borders the Seine, was constructed across from the left arm of the river, a little below the small village of La Chaussée, downstream of Bougival. A dam at Bezons on the right arm creates a

hydraulic head Hydraulic head or piezometric head is a specific measurement of liquid pressure above a vertical datum., 410 pages. See pp. 43–44., 650 pages. See p. 22. It is usually measured as a liquid surface elevation, expressed in units of length, ...

measuring high to power the wheels of the Machine de Marly. The upper pumping relay station (demolished) was located next to the Château des Eaux (1700) and pumped water to the top of the Louveciennes aqueduct, which fed the Louveciennes and Marly reservoirs, near the site of the

(demolished). Image:MachineDeMarlySituationMap.jpg, Location of the Machine de Marly Image:MachineDeMarlySituationMapDetail.jpg, Location of the components of the Machine de Marly (detail) Image:MarlyIslandsLinked.jpg, The Seine between Bezons and the Machine de Marly showing the linkage between islands created by dikes to establish the water head at the Machine Image:MarlyChatouDike.jpg, Dike at Chatou, plan, section and elevation (1763-1765)

Construction

To design and build this machine, Arnold de Ville, who did not have the technical skills, appealed to two men from Liège, the master carpenter and mechanic

(1645–1708) and his brother Paulus. He had already worked with them on a pump at the Château de Modave and Rennequin Sualem was the designer of the pump at the Château de Val. The entire project – channeling and dikes on the Seine, construction of the machine and the network of aqueducts and basins – would last for 6 years. The chosen site on the Seine would later become the town of Bougival (at the location of the current locks of Bougival). About 7 kilometers upstream, Colbert channeled a portion of the Seine by linking several islands with dikes from the island of Bezons and separating the river into two arms, a western arm for navigation and an eastern arm destined to supply the machine by creating a constriction and a drop of about three meters to power the 14 paddle wheels of the machine. The construction mobilized 1800 workers and required more than of

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

, of

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...

and of

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cut, ...

and as much

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuri ...

. The wood used in the construction of the platform and the wheels of the machine, and for the dikes between the islands and for the buildings came from the surrounding forests. The iron for rods came from the Nivernais and Champagne and most of the cast iron pipe was produced in Normandy. A large number of

Walloons Walloons (; french: Wallons ; wa, Walons) are a Gallo-Romance ethnic group living native to Wallonia and the immediate adjacent regions of France. Walloons primarily speak '' langues d'oïl'' such as Belgian French, Picard and Walloon. Wallo ...

came to work on the project. They possessed a know-how acquired from their work on water evacuation from mines. Many defected as well because of the economic difficulties encountered then in

Wallonia Wallonia (; french: Wallonie ), or ; nl, Wallonië ; wa, Waloneye or officially the Walloon Region (french: link=no, Région wallonne),; nl, link=no, Waals gewest; wa, link=no, Redjon walone is one of the three regions of Belgium—al ...

, which had been ravaged by wars. Illiterate, the Sualem brothers were from a family of master carpenters from the mines of Liège. They were the only ones to have mastered the mechanism for remote power transmission, the

flatrod system {{Short description, Invention The flatrod system (german: italic=yes, Kunstgestänge, Stangenkunst, Stangenwerk, or ''Stangenleitung''; sv, italic=yes, Konstgång or ''Stånggång'') was an invention of the mining industry that enabled the mecha ...

necessary for the proper functioning of the machine of Marly. The Walloon craftsmen went on to become the primary maintenance men essential for the enormous task of keeping the machine in working order. File:Machine de Marly- carte de la Seine.jpg, Map of 1783 showing the deviation of the Seine File:Carte Machine de Marly.jpg, Elevation and perspective of the Machine de Marly (c. 1715) by

Nicolas de Fer Nicolas de Fer (, 1646 – 25 October 1720) was a French cartographer and geographer. He also was an engraver and publisher. His works focused more on quantity than quality, there were often geographical errors, and they were more artistic than a ...

The work began in June 1681 with the canalization of the Seine. The construction of the machine began at the end of 1681. On June 14, 1682, a successful demonstration was held in the presence of Louis XIV. The water could be elevated to the top of the hillside. The machine was inaugurated June 13, 1684 by the king and his court. The aqueduc de Louveciennes was completed in 1685 and the entire project, three years later, in 1688. The total cost of the project was 5.5 million

livres tournois The (; ; abbreviation: ₶.) was one of numerous currencies used in medieval France, and a unit of account (i.e., a monetary unit used in accounting) used in Early Modern France. The 1262 monetary reform established the as 20 , or 80.88 g ...

(over 100 million dollars 2015 ). It included the construction of the machine itself (3,859,583 livres), buildings, aqueducts and water basins, the supply of materials, and the wages of the workers and artisans. (Rennequin Sualem was the best paid with 1800 pounds per year.). After the end of the work and the successful demonstration, Rennequin Sualem was appointed First Engineer of the King by Louis XIV and knighted. To the king, who asked him how he had had the idea of this machine, Rennequin answered in Walloon: "Tot tuzant, Sire" ("By thinking hard, Sire"). Arnold de Ville earned a great deal of money from the success of the machine and was able to rise into the aristocracy.

Description

The engraving illustrated here describes the functioning of the machine as follows:

THE MACHINE OF MARLY is built on an arm of the Seine river. It consists of 14 wheels of 30 Paris feet [] in diameter, the axles of which have two cranks, one which moves the pistons which push the water into the pipes and raise it up to the first reservoir; the other moves a system of crossarm levers which run the length of the mountain up to the highest reservoir. These crossarms power the pumps which are in the reservoirs and pump the water from the lower reservoir to the upper and from there to the top of the tower which is at the summit of the mountain, from where it runs over a large aqueduct which feeds different pipes to furnish all the waters of Versailles and Marly.''

Pumping technology of the era of Louis XIV did not allow the delivery of water from the Seine to the top of the aqueduct of Louveciennes, an elevation differential of more than in just one stage, so two intermediate pump relay stations were built, one at and another at above the river. Pumps in the relay locations were powered by two sets of oscillating timber and metal tie-rod linkages, driven by the river paddle wheels. A reservoir at each station buffered the water supply for each level of pumps. File:Machineanim1.JPG, Computer animation of a typical wheel showing pumps and crank linkage] File:Machmarly3D1.jpg, Looking southwest File:Machmarly3D3.jpg, Looking northeast File:Machmarly3D2.jpg, Detail

Remnants

Some remnants of Dufrayer's machine are still visible today, but little remains of the original 17th-century masterpiece built by the Sualem brothers, de Ville and Louis XIV. The overgrown walls of the mid-slope reservoir are visible on the hillside, just adjacent to the cobblestone path that runs straight up the incline. The paving stones on this 17th century service road are set with their top edges slightly exposed to allow better traction for the horses which hauled loads uphill. Two administration buildings from the original Machine complex of 1684 still exist next to the Seine. The building which housed the steam-driven pumping machine from 1825 can still be seen next to the river as well. An engraving of the

Paris Observatory The Paris Observatory (french: Observatoire de Paris ), a research institution of the Paris Sciences et Lettres University, is the foremost astronomical observatory of France, and one of the largest astronomical centers in the world. Its histo ...

from the beginning of the eighteenth century shows the wooden "Marly tower" on the right, a dismantled part of the Machine de Marly (the temporary tower replaced by La tour du Levant at the beginning of the Aqueduc de Louveciennes), moved to the

by astronomer

Giovanni Domenico Cassini Giovanni Domenico Cassini, also known as Jean-Dominique Cassini (8 June 1625 – 14 September 1712) was an Italian (naturalised French) mathematician, astronomer and engineer. Cassini was born in Perinaldo, near Imperia, at that time in the ...

for mounting long telescopes.Barbet 1907
p. 124
File:ResMiCote.jpg, Remnants of the mid-slope reservoir of the original Marly Machine File:Bougival - Bâtiment Charles X 001.JPG,

Charles X Charles X (born Charles Philippe, Count of Artois; 9 October 1757 – 6 November 1836) was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. An uncle of the uncrowned Louis XVII and younger brother to reigning kings Louis XVI and Lou ...

building from 1825 File:Paris Observatory XVIII century.png, Marly tower at the

Notes

Bibliography

* Adams, W. H. (1979). ''The French Garden 1500–1800''. New York: Braziller. . * Barbet, Louis-Alexandre (1907). ''Les grandes eaux de Versailles: installations mécaniques et étangs artificiels: description des fontaines et de leurs origines''. Paris: H. Dounod et E. Pinat
Copy
at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

. * Bélidor, Bernard Forest de (1739). ''Architecture Hydraulique, ou L'art de conduire, d'élever et de ménager les eaux pour les différens besoins de la vie, Tome Second''. Paris: L. Cellot
Copy
at Gallica. * Bentz, Bruno; Soullard, Éric (2011). "La Machine de Marly", ''Château de Versailles: de l'Ancien régime à nos jours'', no. 1 (April/June 2011), pp. 73–77.
Notice bibliographique
at BnF. * Demoulin, Bruno; Kupper, Jean-Louis (2004). ''Histoire de la Wallonie''. Toulouse: Privat. . * Pendery, David (2014)
"La Machine de Marly"
at www.marlymachine.org
Archive copy (17 December 2014)
at the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...

. * Testard-Vaillant, Philippe (2010). "Des grands travaux en cascade". ''Les sciences au Château de Versailles'' (exhibition catalogue in French), pp. 70–71. Issy-les-Moulineaux: Mandadori magazines France. . . * Thompson, Ian (2006). ''The Sun King's Garden: Louis XIV, André Le Nôtre and the Creation of the Gardens of Versailles''. London: Bloomsbury. . * Tiberghien, Frédéric (2002). ''Versailles, le chantier de Louis XIV: 1662–1715''. aris Perrin. .

External links

Marly Machine

Bougival Tourisme Office

La Machine de Marly video (in French)
{{coord, 48, 52, 16, N, 2, 7, 29, E, type:landmark_region:FR_scale:1000, display=title Former buildings and structures in France Palace of Versailles

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Infrastructure completed in 1684 1684 establishments in France Water supply pumping stations