ABSTRACT

These days zoos receive a lot of criticism, and some people think they would be best closed down. This is not a particularly new idea. Indeed, had you been around in Versailles two hundred years ago, you might have seen-and heard-a determined band of citizens, a group of local Jacobin sympathisers, marching across their park, drum beating, tricolour at their head, intent on liberating the animals from the former royal menagerie (Loisel 1912: II, 159-60). The Revolution was three years old, France had been declared a republic, and the menagerie, which had been founded by Louis XIV, was now the republic’s property. Met by the menagerie’s director, the group’s leader addressed him in stirring words. They had come in the name of the people and of Nature, to demand the liberty of beings intended by their Creator for freedom but detained by the pride and pomp of tyrants. The director couldn’t refuse, but just in case certain liberated beasts proceeded to devour their liberators, he declined to free the dangerous animals himself, instead offering the Jacobins the keys. Revolutionary fervour was tempered by reflection, and a decision made to leave the fierce beasts provisionally where they were. Sadly, most of the harmless animals ended up at the knacker’s (understandably, as many people were starving). But some animals were liberated, including several pairs of Java rats, whose descendants were to wreak havoc with the structure of the château. Others, including deer and birds, acclimatised in neighbouring woods, according to an interesting report of fifty years later (Loisel 1912: II, 158-61).