Fontainebleau and Insights

So Monday we went to Fontainebleau, the chateau where all of the kings from the 1400s to Napoleon lived. That is so much history!! It was a bit of a struggle getting there, seeing as only 2 of the original 10 ended up going, or so I thought. It is so hard to meet up with people in a huge train station without cell phones. I don't know how people lived without them before!! So me and Rachel got these to console ourselves.




Fontainebleau is beautiful! As one of my friends put it: "you can tell why the peasants were upset" haha. Seriously almost every inch is covered in gold. And real gold at that. It's beautiful but rather sad to look at when you realize where all of the money came from. But on a happier note, as we were wandering around the chateau who do we run into but the other half of our group! (Caleb's study abroad backpack is very distinctive haha) Turns out they were on our same train and everything and we looking for us too. Ridiculous. So it all worked out after all. Funny how it always seems to...I should be more trusting I guess!

After going through the chateau we wandered around the gardens, they're so pretty. Apparently this pond was built by the king as a bet because he said it could be filled in 2 days. Sadly he lost, (it took 8 days) and had to reward his opponent with 1000 gold crowns. but it's gorgeous.

But the best part of it was this: I have French ancestors that were directly impacted by an edict signed there in 1685. Wikipedia explains it best: On 18 October 1685, Louis XIV signed the Edict of Fontainebleau there. Also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, this royal fiat reversed the permission granted to the Huguenots in 1598 to worship publicly in specified locations and hold certain other privileges. The result was that a large number of Protestants were forced into exile, mainly in the Low Countries, Prussia and in England.




Some of those Protestants were my ancestors. It made the history really come much more alive to me, especially once I came home, skyped my mom, and realized the details. The Edict of Fontainebleau and the persecution that followed (and preceded it) is why I have French ancestry. They moved to England, the Netherlands and eventually to the colonies in America. So when I saw this depiction of Henry IV in Fontainebleau, it meant a lot more to me than just a statue of an old king. He was the one that allowed some of my ancestors to worship in freedom for a time, and the edict that forced them to flee happened in the same place. A place that I got to walk around in.

 It made me realize how much religious freedom really means to me, and how proud I am to be an American. My whole family history is full of people fleeing because of religious persecution. We have Protestants fleeing France, Quakers fleeing England, Mormons fleeing from all over Europe, and another that I am forgetting. Being in France, sometimes I feel like I have to pretend that I'm not American, that being an American means that I am just a another dumb tourist. Somehow Europe just seems so much cooler. But you know what? I should be proud to be an American. I am proud to be an American. My family has been American since before the U.S. existed as a country. That is really remarkable, and I am so grateful for the religious freedom that I am privileged to have.

This is why I love traveling so much. It teaches you to realize how much you have to be grateful for, to learn respect for other cultures, and to realize how important history is to remember. Without knowing that my ancestors were impacted by Fontainebleau, it's just another pretty chateau. But knowing the background is so much better.