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Brief
history
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The history of the Courances estate dates back to the mid-fifteenth century. It was a seigniory during the Middle Ages, consisting of agricultural and wooded grounds with economic, fiscal and judiciary privileges. Courances did not become a country house until much later. The economic and demographic upheavals of the Hundred Years' War forced the last remaining noble owners of Courances to sell it to the Lapites, a bourgeois family from Paris, in 1460. The Lapite family owned Courances for approximately one century. Around 1530-1540, Étienne Lapite added a gallery "awash with green" overlooking a "garden" to the medieval dwelling. Because of King François I, the nearby royal residence of Fontainebleau and its surrounding area were the height of fashion. Several lords in the King's entourage were purchasing property in the region. One of them, Cosme Clausse, Secretary of royal commissions and owner of the nearby seigniory of Fleury-en-Bière, acquired the estate of Courances in 1548. Along with his sons and grandsons, many of whom were Grand Masters of Water and Forests (forerunners of the Water and Forestry ministers), he developed the first landscaping and hydraulics plan there. After the Gallard family took over Courances in 1622, it was soon on a par with the great estates of wealthy Parisians who constituted the elite royal administration. A native of Orléans who made a fortune managing property sequestrated by the courts, Claude I Gallard set his heart on the Clausse estate, now somewhat dilapidated, to show those in the d'Ile-de-France region how high his social status had risen. Under Claude I and his son Claude II Gallard, plans to embellish the estate took priority over the agricultural activity. The Gallard family literally re-created Courances through a rigorous land acquisition policy and commissioned the major architectural work that created the château's classical appearance. But the financial burden of such a policy, coupled with the upkeep of a hotel particulier (private mansion) in Paris, quickly became too expensive for the family, especially as they had abandoned Claude I's lucrative, if somewhat less glamorous, judicial services, gravitating instead towards the more prominent magistrate circles in Paris. The property had undergone most of the transformations and improvements that were to determine its appearance until the late nineteenth century. Unfortunately the Gallard family's creditors confiscated Courances and auctioned it off in 1677. A junior branch of the family managed to buy it back and ensure its upkeep, warding off the collapse of the Gallard House. By forging, or rather re-forging, some shrewd alliances with Paris's great noblesse de robe (nobility obtained by high office of justice), the owners of Courances managed to surmount the tremendous mortality rate that devastated the family (in forty years, the three successive owners of Courances died before reaching thirty). It was a woman, Anne-Marguerite-Catherine de Gallard, who re-stored some of Courances' former glory in the eighteenth century. Nicolas Potier de Novion's widow revived the feudal domination of the seigniory, reclaiming ancient rights that had been discarded or forgotten, restoring mills and fishponds, and expanding the agricultural activity behind the château and park. Through marriage, Courances became the property of the Nicolay family in 1768. The Nicolays were an old family of the great Paris noblesse de robe whose members had held the prestigious position of premier president of the Chambre des Comptes (Court of Finances) since the sixteenth century. It became a prized country home and a place for the owner to work-as reflected in the beautiful library. The upheaval of the French Revolution did not spare the Nicolays: both father and son were beheaded in 1794 during the Terror. As a result, Courances was placed under seal (1793-1798) before it was given back to the family. The family again came into favour with the reigning powers during the Restoration (1815-1830), and Aymard de Nicolay, a peer of France, set about improving the appearance of his property. This great aristocrat, with a keen interest in education and hygiene (he paid the local school teacher and surgeon himself), remained loyal to the senior branch of the Bourbons when Charles X was removed from the throne and replaced by his cousin Louis-Philippe in 1830. Because of his links to the Bourbons, he left France.
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